Chinese bikes

[qcnr]

Well, just to comment again, yes I try to avoid anything made in China. Have recently bought a Samsung phone. Will never use Ebay, AliExpress, Temu, et al.
Will never buy a chinese made bike or car, but as someone else has pointed out western companies with manufacturing in China apply their own standards
and don't necessarily contribute directly to the chinese economy, unlie buying an Xpeng, BYD or Kove.
So yes I do my bit...

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

Read Material World by Ed Conway.

Complex devices like mobile phones contain materials and components from all over the world.

There's also the question of where the 'intellectual' content comes from.

For instance, no one realises how much British content there is in almost every smartphone. AMR (which grew out of the remains of Acorn Computers) designs the CPUs for pretty much every smartphone in the world, and is based in Cambridge. It doesn't actually make any of the components, but it doesn't need to.

Every chip for every electronic device passes through Taiwan, where a finishing process is carried out that cannot be replicated anywhere else in the world. The Taiwanese government has informed both the government of Communist China and the Government of the USA that if the Communists invade then demolition charges build into the processing machines will be detonated and that's the end of China's electronics industry.

On a more mundane level, I won two chainsaws. The Chinese-branded one has a Japanese carb, and the American/German branded one has a Chinese carb. I'll let you guess which is the easiest to start!

Re: Taiwan, I was involved in Mountain Bike assembly from the early days of the sport in the UK, Taiwan have always produced the highest quality (consistantly) Mountain Bikes. I've had a few high end Frames genuinely produced in USA, 50/50 chance of getting a good u...missaligned, poor welds, badly machined bearing seats, Ive sent some back for replacement only to be supplied with a frame that had some other major defect different to the first one.

Oh and Mahle Filters, yea a recent last couple of years change to Chinese production, the finish is clearly not of the past standard I realy don't know if the internals are the same.
I've switched to equivalent Bosch filters for now.

I just had a Mahle airfilter for my 950 delivered. It's made in Germany and looks identical to the genuine KTM ones...which I think are also made in Germany.

[Asgard]

Aah, air filters...yea I got a made in austria mahle for my 701 recently, perhaps its just the oil filters gone chinese ...for now.
Saying that I've seen a few made in mexico mahle filters of different models to what I use, no idea if its old stock or just that various models get made in different countries.

on a similar subject, I've had a couple of aeroplanes with the ubiquitous Rotax 912 engines, made in austria and the benchmark for microlight and light sport aircraft.
Recently the chinese have brought out a Blatant copy (its ridiculous how straight a copy it is), nobody is buying them..the aircraft builders market is extremely conservative for obvious reasons, it'll take a good few years before they are accepted


https://zonsenaerotek.com/

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

I wonder if that engine powers the drones being used against Ukraine?

[Asgard]

Its been used in various Drones but the Shahed 136 Kamakaze Drones that have become familiar are powered by Limbach 550 engines or rather copies of them made in Iran and China.

Incidently The Nynja (silly name) I fly right now was from a kit produced in Ukraine by a company formed from ex Antonov workers, it has a propellor made in Kiev and the Ukranian forces have adapted a few to be remote controlled and carry bombs

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

Cool little plane

[garyboy]

Asgard .. just don't fly to Southern Ukraine.

[qcnr]

So anyway, it seems that Chinese kit is being swallowed hook line and sinker by media.
I find that very interesting as on the one hand china as a country is mostly criticized for it's human rights violations, environmental disregard
and generally a complete lack of empathy for anyone.
Yet electric cars, motorbikes and other shiny goods produced by chinese companies are fantastic.
Anyone asked Deepseek if a tank can crush a person? Then ask it for an example of this happening.
Chiina willl only tell you what it wants you to know, and distracting you from the truth with smoke and mirrors.

[dave h]

new drz 400 price looks good not,probably less power,more weight,less fuel range,
not Dakar proven, same with new ktm 390 [wherever thats made],
you can keep your moral high ground,
I'll keep my Kove.

[Asgard]

TBH, the way things are, if you dont want to support nasty dictatorships..... FFS dont buy a Harley Davidson