Who exactly is GE Lighting?  Their ballasts are China made.  They don't even put their own lamps in their fixtures.  I got this GE miniature fixture and it came installed with a China Light lamp. I'm sure the entire thing is China Made.  The lamp installed in "GE" logo fixture is branded "CH Lighting" F4T5/D




Who exactly is GE Lighting?  Do they simply have factories in China, or do they just license the "GE" logo to other people so they can sell China Made stuff under GE name using brand licensing?  When I buy a GE ballast, or a GE lamp, am I getting General Electric, or am I getting some generic China Made crap that is simply wrapped in GE logo through trademark licensing?

http://www.ge.com/tradinglicensing/trademark.html

GE Coffee makers from Wal-Mart that caught fire aren't "General Electric". Probably just some China Made junk Wal-Mart negotiated with GE Trademark licensing to sell under GE name.  
http://lizenzcous.blogspot.com/

Maybe I shouldn't expect GE branded China Made crap to not exceed quality check much better than quality check that went into proof reading of China Light's website.

CH Lighting statement direct copy and paste.

"Advanced technology
With the brand of “CH LIGHTING”,CH LIGHTING is selling her products to more than 120 countries and has become one of the main brands in advanced countries and areas in all over the world . With the excellent visual field and strong srtength ,CH LIGHTING is formally starting for the selling in Chinese domestic mrket. In the past thirteen years, CH Lighting is leading the development and sturdy on lighting ,and CH Lighting is cooperating and communicatng closely with Chinese universities and graduate schools. Researching and developing new products is the main advantage of CH Lighting."

I think these days GE stand more for "General Everything"...

The new "cool thing" nowadays is to outsource lighting products from small Asian companies. If you open a typical fluorescent fixture from the hardware store, it likely contains a ballast from a company you NEVER heard about before.

However when I open 80s (even 90s) and older fixtures, they almost all contain ballasts from major American manufacturers (or their Canadian subdivisions here in Canada). It seems that lighting doesn't interest the Big Three as much today. And it's just getting worse with years. It's possible that a good part of electronic ballasts in the future (especially OEMs in fixtures) will be made by small Asian manufacturers. 

Seems like a lot of their "mainline" lamps are still made by GE in North America, but their less common and specialty lamps are being imported.  All their decorative, miniature fluorescent, circlines and other specialty lamps are made in China, while all their HIDs are now made in Hungary.

I think this is a smuggled product that are imported illegally to the US without passing ANSI and that uses GE logo illegally to camouflage the product as being high quality of a major brand but actually a very low cost chinese junk from unknown brand (Marketing and buying cheating).
Israel have already experienced this problem in 2005, with these electric devices:
1. 7W incandescent lamps for nightlights with an E12 base made by HAINING YANIING ZHEJIANG CHINA. No major details on the package, marketed in ACE shop in kibbutz Shefaim.
2. A Sunlight branded 60W 230V E27 incandescent lamp. No major details on the package.
3. A Luxten branded transformer 60W (MODEL, not WATTAGE!!!) of unknown type that allows the israelis plugs to be connected despite of its "american or japanese" outlet voltage of 110V and the fact that only one pin of the plug can be inserted, the other remains outside while connected, presents a safety hazard.
4. Another electricity things that it is hard to me to translate into english.
All of that things didn't pass the Israel Bureau of Standards and are very dangerous to use.

They are made in the former Tungsram factory, what cooperated quite closely with GE even in the former socialistic era (quite unusually for the eastern-block, but they were "selected" as the main lamp supplier for the whole eastern block, so had access to "western money" for required investments)

that same battery fixture is sold here at walmart(chinamart)
the ge name is used by them to market all sorts of cheap widgets.like many other brand names it means nothing.just stamped on whatever to trick the brand loyal folks that grew up using the good stuff they made at the time.

I buy GE and Phillips lamps, even though the GE is more than likely made in PRC, they are still a better lamp than the El Cheepo Chr@p you can get for around 30% less. The last GE 125W mercury I bought are surprisingly bright compared to the old lamps they replaced, which were European made lamps.

GE appliances are definitely a badge job, the original is either junk or a Daewoo or LG made product ( the price reveals who made it, if cheap then "Mister Lee" Make Chleep, or it will look like Daewho? or LG products but a different colour or slightly different layout of minor parts that are cheap to mould) made with logo and manual inserted branded GE. Same with many manufacturers nowadays, the original big brands are now a shell that only does marketing, and makes and distributes nothing physical.

Phillips at least has factories outside the PRC and has better quality control, though YMMV in both cases.

The Hungary GE lamps aren't bad, I bought some at Ace Hardware several years ago.