Yes, it does make a difference. Western manufacturers need to worry about both their reputations and lawsuits. That means they have to check out where their products are made and keep a wary eye on what's going into them lest their Chinese partners decide to make substitutes.
Fairly confident that my pocket knives and little electronics gadgets aren't going to burn the house down. If we were talking about stuff that runs off 120V AC power, I'd take the risk seriously. Or something with a big lithium battery pack, for that matter, I would be skeptical about buying a mystery-brand product.
And, some of these Chinese brands do have a reputation to uphold. Xiaomi, for example, is the 5th largest cell-phone maker in the world. You can get a hi-spec Xiaomi phone for a lot less than a comparable Samsung, and it won't explode. I haven't tried one of their phones yet, but I have their power bank, and it's top notch. I won't be surprised when some US brand starts buying them and selling them domestically for a 400% mark-up.
I do know a few people who have bought extremely cheap smartphones through GearBest, and bought pay-as-you-go minutes from Telus. $50 for a phone and $100 for a whole year of talk and test. If you're on a tight budget, that's a heck of a lot better than getting a "free phone" on a plan that costs $40+ every month.
Last year I bought a GoPro imitator made by another Chinese cell-phone company, Elephone. It works great. It cost me $65. This year Newegg is selling the same camera in Canada for $160. Comparable GoPro? $300+ I believe.
Likewise stuff that comes over through the normal means and winds up in regular retail outlets has to be checked out by those retail outlets. At least the bigger ones. The Bay does NOT want to find out through news stories that its pajamas burst into flames if they go anywhere near a flame, Loblaws doesn't want to discover that the toothpaste they're selling has ground up body parts or whatever in it. They're not going to sell **** that comes from some unknown Chinese company. Or any company they don't have some degree of confidence in.
Didn't Loblaws get caught for almost exactly that not long ago? Slapping their "Joe Fresh" label on stuff that turns out to have been made by slave laborers in Bangladesh? And we only found out about it because the factory burned down, killing hundreds of workers? All those charred corpses holding partially finished Joe Fresh sweaters and jeans? It sounds like Loblaw's didn't actually know much about the circumstances under which their "Joe Fresh" brand gets made after all.
I mean, if I'm going to be sold stuff made by slaves who are going to perish in burning buildings anyway, I might as well not pay an 800% mark-up, right?
The corruption over there is almost beyond belief. Any company that can get away with something WILL. It's not like, in the normal course of business they have to worry about the law. Especially with stuff they export. They're all paying off their local bureaucrats anyway.
I wouldn't trust their food. I wouldn't trust off-brand dollar store light bulbs or anything else that runs off AC power. But stuff like small electronics and pocket knives and other little gadgets, I have no worries.
-k