I've been in a BYD shark. It is obviously cheap on fuel. Very powerful. But there were a few irritating things about it. Like if you stick a USB with music into it, it does not have a sensible browser. You cannot play all the music on one folder. It puts things in random order. It's like they got to the stage where they were able to play a song and decided, great, job's done. For such a high upfront price, a slick looking car, and a huge display screen that controls everything, you would expect them to have the little things like that figured out.

Don't have a problem with the concept itself. It is called common sense in engineering. The Chinese didn't invent it. They just draw the line in some strange places.

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It pervades every business that manages to remain in business. The concept is no different in China. The Chinese just have different standards. They were starving to death by the tens of millions in 1960. They are not going to "get" the high expectations that we have. Not overnight, anyway.

The only thing that might differ in any fundamental way is that the Chinese are upfront about it. Microsoft is not going to announce to the market that the software they just released is fully of little bugs that are not going to be resolved until after this version is obsolete, but they are releasing it anyway to stay ahead of Apple and because people will buy it as-is. They will spin it the best way they can. But there is no shortage of programmers tearing their hair out in frustration at all the new problems microsoft has created. Many of them within microsoft itself. And despite being full of bugs, it is still high quality software.

And every other 'asian tiger' has been through the same thing.

I am pretty sure you can find a philosopher from every society that has had writing who lamented the practice. And probably a few who didn't have writing. It's hard to get good help these days.

If it is such a big problem in China, how have they managed to catch up to the word's leading car manufacturers in such a short time?

We do not have a copyright on work ethic.

There is no need at all to go looking for a China-specific explanation. There is a far more obvious one staring you in the face: communism. Communism will create a half-arsed work ethic in any society where is takes hold. It happened every single time. And it doesn't need a convenient catch phrase to describe it. But communism can also be abandoned, far more easily than culture. Which is what is happening in China.

Can you give an example of any previously-communist country that now has higher manufacturing standards than China?

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Perhaps you should have read what I posted.

Can you give an example of any previously-communist country that now has higher manufacturing standards than China?

Is that the only example you can think of? Nearly every discussion of Poland I can see focusses on EU-imposed, legislated quality control rules, and the ease with which European countries can oversea production in Poland. I haven't seen anything credit any difference in Polish culture.

So again, the explanations are in the "bleeding obvious" category, without the need to try to hang an elaborate theory on an old catch phrase, or any nation-specific culture.