OK, so here is a question regarding quality and country of origin.
The heirarchy is (used to be?) USA/Japan, Korea, Mexico/Indonesia, China. I have guitars on my wall made in all these countries. I have enjoyed all of them. The "better" guitars are more attractive, have higher quality finishes, better hardware. The Chinese guitar required more work/repairs when new, and the tolerances were not tight (misaligned pickup ring, other issues) yet the fretwork was surprisingly good. My Indonesia LTD, I can't tell a difference in construction quality compared to the Korean, although the hardware is a lower tier and the finish is more basic.
What about any particular country of origin correlates to quality? Presumably, if Chinese builders were given the same money to build higher quality instuments, they could surpass the other countries? In fact, because their labor costs are lower, if they had the same budget as say Japanese builders, they could theoretically turn out better instruments.
My hunch is that country of origin is still a major selling point that the buyer factors into his purchase, even though it doesn't necessarily correlate with quality. IOW, guitars are still made in these more expensive locations because buyers would not pay a high price for Chinese instruments, even if it resulted in better product.
I do believe in "buy american" and that globalization has undermined prosperity of the middle classes in most nations. So I'm not particularly fond of buying Chinese products given current geopolitics, but I also realize they could build top quality guitars at prices lower than usa/japan if they were so inclined (they manufacture smart phones, which is orders of magnitude more difficult.)
