I suspect some of the posters recall the events of ~10-12yrs ago as discussed in these two articles
https://www.velonews.com/not-all-fra...terfeit-bikes/
https://www.bicycling.com/bikes-gear...ake-bike-gear/
Motobecane brand was long ago sold by its original owner to the present purveyors which appear to be Taiwan
based. It was a so-so brand out of France in the 70s when I started riding like Gitane and Peugeot making
decent but not great bikes. Its current iteration seems to have held up over time with decent frames. It
is possible the OP bike frame is actually made in Taiwan, but a bit more likely to be mainland in origin. Saw
a recent article in ?WSJ? ?NYT? about Giant which reported that in the neighborhood of half of their production was
mainland based.
I suspect the frame will do fine on nearly dead flat Houston trails. As one ATB rider said, ATB frames are disposable.