The only concerns I have about products from China, simply due to their location (being from... well... China) are the raw materials. Chinese can make products good or bad, just like Americans. But the Chinese raw materials tend to be inferior to ours.
I agree...to an extent. You said it in your third sentence though. American companies can produce some bad products also. However, labeling an entire country based off of a particular experience is being a little short-sided. That's like saying Honda has never made a reliable car because you knew of one that had problems.
If you call a random build house over in China and say you want a 3" core 12" driver that is loud, they're going to give you the cheapest thing they possibly can that meets that small criteria. Why the cheapest? You didn't tell them exactly what to use. What grade of steel, magnets, type of surround (layers, material, etc), cone, spider, terminals, vc former, vc winding height, length, etc, none of that was in your description / technical documentation. If you don't tell them what you want, how are they going to know what you want?
Like I said, I agree to an extent. We've received some very bad samples from other build houses in China. We've also received even worse samples from some build houses here in the United States. On the flip side the coin we have received great samples / production runs (the v3 Mag's) from US companies and very good samples from build houses over in China. We aren't just using one build house either, we're using three - each one of them does what they do VERY well.
Raw-material-wise, we are up to snuff. The grade of steel, magnets, and aluminum (basket), are on par. Same goes for the cone mixture, spider material, voice coil material, and all adhesives. We've been working on this long enough to have crossed all of our T's and dotted all of our I's.