Originally Posted by
pwdeegan
As i recollect, too, Italy (and maybe the EU in general?) has a pretty low standard of what constitutes "made in Italy"; something on the order of the final 10% of production, which powder coating might be enough for. (<-- don't quote me on that, my EU knowledge is spotty.) Many carbon bikes are made in China because the process is fairly environmentally toxic, never mind that labor is cheap (and the laborers also pay an environmental price in health; but like i wrote: they're cheap). It ain't pretty; it's just another day in globalization.
The process you're looking at is generally known as 山寨 (shan1zhai4)—other countries/people's R&D, and then the Chinese knock-off (which can be anywhere from same as OEM to much much less).
+1 big time
I've been reading in the blogs where Orbea is getting hit with the same problem. The Orbea folks are not saints, they like to maximize profits too; they bring Taiwanese and Chinese frames to Spain and do a fancy paint job and call it "EU made". But that is not the end of the story, Orbea has honest-to-goodness R&D facilities, they test their stuff, they sponsor racing teams and collect real world data. They support their products. It's not just "flipping" a Chinese product. This goes to the core of why the WTO has their hands full with countries that practice intellectual property piracy. It's not cool at all.