Just because something is assembled in China should not detract from its build quality. If the collection of parts being assembled are manufactured in China, there could be cause for concern. These two concepts seem to run together all too often these days. My Jolida was assembled in China from a majority of components designed and built in MD. After 9 years, my amp has performed flawlessly, as have the rest of my stereo components.

Chinese manufactured parts are, on the whole, cheaply designed, hewn from cheap materials, easy to mass produce in great numbers, but are only effective enough to look good enough to sell. There's less forethought, no passion that goes into these products.

Chinese labor on the other hand yields far better results than Chinese manufacturing in terms of quality. If you're assembling a McIntosh amplifier, the individual pieces are made to exacting specifications, thus they should fit together precisely as they were intended to. Just follow the instructions. Any labor force can do this, no matter how much they're paid.

However, if it's a clock radio sold for $5.99 at the dollar store, the parts are cast or molded from crappy molds where each piece is slightly different from the last, thus assembly will be shoddy. Not to mention the cheaper metals and other raw materials as stated earlier. These factors give rise to the poorer quality products we see from the PRC.