Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt Wiser
And the PRC's workmanship in their naval shipyards is still questionable. The Pakistanis and Thais bought surface combatants from the ChiComs, and both had to send their ships to Western yards for overhaul as a result. Some problems: watertight doors that wouldn't close, pipes improperly fitted, fire-fighting gear not working, and so on. The Thais vowed never to buy from the PRC ever again, no matter how cheap the price was as a result.
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And it's not just their naval shipyards, it seems to be endemic to their whole fabrication industry. Two examples, one from personal experience and one from a friend who worked in mine site construction.
1. At my old workplace, we purchased some industrial dust extraction units from a PRC company. The motors accompanying the units were underpowered, the legs to stand the units on were designed in a manner that prevented easy access to the dust collection drum and the electrical and pneumatic controls can only be accessed via a ladder (true, only a small ladder, but you still can't reach the controls from ground level)
2. My friend mentioned this to me. It occurred sometime in the mid-2000s on the construction site he was on in the north west of Western Australia. The construction company decided to buy pre-fabricated steel beams from China because they were cheaper than having them made in Australia. Unfortunately, the manufacturer in the PRC had put all the bolt holes in the wrong places and some beams were not the right length.
All the steel beams had to be shipped about 1500km (approx 930 miles) to Perth to be fixed for a not insubstantial cost - the rumour being that the whole exercise cost as much as if they'd just bought the beams from an Australian company.