It is not an "interesting" view of history, it is one that is discussed within business / manufacturing and research around cultural impacts on these items. What I wrote is obviously "high level" and not the only causes of the outcomes, but it speaks to the cultural impacts on how products end up designed and manufactured. It took a long time for American business to accept they were not as good as they thought, longer to accept it was not the guy on the lines fault. In Germany, you had an even more defined class-structure that produced a greater barrier to the necessary changes for quality on the production line (and holding suppliers to account). Japanese companies recognized the importance of making "workers" part of the process early. In China, you have the lingering impacts of communism w.r.t. reduced sense of personal responsibility (stems from lack of personal control), and generally a smaller contextual view of where you fit in resulting in fewer "big picture" people w.r.t. engineering. Staff competitiveness, social worth tied to title, and pay structures often to not reward team work or mentoring. Suppliers relationships are heavily relationship based making quality decisions "difficult" at times. It will not always be like this, but it speaks to why things are the way they are.
My age has no outcome on any of this of course.
