I mean genuine brands - such as Osram (Made in Germany) vs. Osram (Made in China) etc.

What do you think? Are the Chinese lamps really worse? (Or better?)
In what criteria? (lamp life, efficacy, light colour, problems with starting, design...)
Can you support that by your personal experience?

IMHO, stuff made with CHINA PRIDE (thanks, Spatsbear) is inferior to stuff made in USA, Japan, Germany, etc. Just look at Swingline staplers. As soon as they got bought by ACCO, Swingline staplers turned into walmart grade crap.

Just recently, I was asked to fix a cheap Lasko (ASSKO) heater. 20 seconds after I plug it in, it starts filling my room up with stinky smoke. Come to find out, that model had been recalled for that exact problem. I could rant for hours on the made china subject.

I am by no means a Made in China fan, but I did have some positive experiences with some of their products. The MacBook Pro on which I am typing this is an example. I have quite a few F15T8 under cabinet fittings that are made in China with made in China ballasts. They are sold here in Canada under the Home Hardware brand. They have an all-metal body that is screwed together, the ballast is also bolted in (as opposed to rivets). While the ballast is an open core-and-coil unit that is sealed with special tape (not an encapsulated ballast) they seem to work quite well. They are extremely quiet (except when the starter closes). Some have had stuck starters for a few weeks (they run 24/7 in a room that is seldom used in the summer) and still work. Despite all these good characteristics, they feel cheaper than the good old Made-in-somewhere-else fixtures.

On the other hand, I have had bad experiences with the starters in the above mentioned fixtures, all have since been replaced with either Leviton FS-2 or Osram ST151. GE made-in-China fluorescent lamps don't last. My F8T5 makes 9-10 months at best on 24/7. Also, Indonesian-made GE F15T8 lamps last about a year on 24/7 service while Philips Alto made in Holland last over 3 years (never had one fail yet...)

All these confusing paragraphs mean that there are some good (not great) things made in China, and there are others that are not so good (no to mention poor).

The Chinese folks are actually quite smart, but the products they make are only going to be as good as what the quality control requirements are specifying.  So if a ballast made in china seems to give out more often then it did when it was made in the USA, you can't just go assuming that just because it is made in China, it means it is cheap junk.  The US owned companies who have moved production over to China are still the ones responsible for ensuring that the products are made to the quality standards that they set.  The primary reason companies have gone overseas is because the cost of labor is not as expensive thus they earn more profit for the shareholders.  Those people over in other countries work just as hard and most of the time harder then they did in America or other native lands.  Many of them work 6-7 days a week and sleep at the factories and what not.  They are trying to do what everyone else is.. survive.  No one is superior to anyone else, we are all human beings.  It's just too bad that this world revolves around greed and money. 

The differrence is, they really do, what their customer (so the company moving production there) ask for, while the western people just say "imnpossible" and refuse to do the thing, when they feel the cost cutting means the quality will become a piece of sh**.
So when something needs a hour of curing, western engineer say "it may impair the quality, for shorter time we can not make it". Chinese say "it may impair the quality, but if you wish that, we will shorten it".

So if the shareholders want the production cheaper, they move the production to China, where they continue after 1/2 hour in the previoius example.
It is the beancounters, who just ignore what the engineers tell to them...

The workers are not different in the work quality, all know well, what the effect of different cost cutting measures is. The chinese just do not refuse to do c**p, when their customer is asking for such c**p...

It depends on how much is hight retail price.
My philips master led lamps work great (one suffered failure due bad soldering, easely fixed!).
My black macbook (late 2007) continue to work great (i upgraded to 4GB ram and, 3 years ago, 120GB ssd) and, excluding discoloured "A" key, i have no problem at all.

On the other side, one of my garden led lamps ballast failed after 3 years of service (circa 9000 hours) (i paid 7€ for lamp with external ballast)

Some of the "no name" Chinese made F15T8 CW lamps easily did over 20,000 to 30,000 hours. The GE Indonesian and Chinese ones…. ice.  The CXL  F40T12D lamps are erratic. In a lot of starts they failed early and did NOT care for rapid start. I have 2 in the Half Piper 1946 fixture at WKDK and they plod on. Just now showing some light brown marks on the end. I am "abusing" a F15T8D Chinese lamp in my Mazda era fixture that screws into a light socket. I put in a new starter and I switch it on and off a lot as it is in the hall. It's getting brown on the end and shows evidence of wanting to make a teardrop style spot, though it is light brown now. 

I've got one. Thanks to TheMaritimeMan, I now know to NOT buy a pair of Sony MDR-V6 Studio Monitor Headphones off fleabay because they are fake. Those pesky chinese have done a close copy of the real thing, but obviously, the quality of the chinese pairs is non-existent.

Given the minor resurrection of local manufacturing that has taken place in recent times, I often wonder if some stuff that *is* made here is no better than the same stuff made elsewhere. As Medved said, it really depends on the manufacturing tolerances. For example, GE now makes their halogen bulbs in the USA. That is awesome, but will these bulbs actually be higher quality than the ones from Mexico or China? They very well could be, but GE could also opt to sacrifice quality to reduce cost. The factory here can slack just as well as the factory in China. Only time will tell.

An excellent example is Apple products, which are very high quality, despite being made in China. The reason is Apple sets very tight manufacturing tolerances, and sends their own personnel to China to make sure they are implemented.

Generally speaking, when companies outsource to China the quality of their products goes downhill.

The labor in China is cheaper because they force children to work in the factories. However, children are too young to know the correct procedures and techniques to operate the equipment. That causes the parts to be made differently than the engineers intended. So although the final product might look okay, it is not made to the design specifications.
Usually when I take apart something that was made in China, it is the low quality of the parts that failed, not the design.

As for Apple products, they have tighter quality control and have Apple employees in China watching the manufacture of their products. However, they also use slave labor and have had plenty of problems - just look up the Foxconn riots and suicides.

I usually try to buy products made in the U.S.A. (or North America in general) because I live and work here. I figure that I am fortunate enough to have a job here, so I should spend the money I make on products made by fellow Americans so that we can all earn a living.
Also, American made products must meet high environmental and safety standards, while Chinese manufacturing can pollute and use as many toxic materials as they want.

Some companies employs what called "Planned Obsolescence", in which they manufactures their products to last for a specific period of time (And Apple is one example).
An iPhone usually lasts the life of its battery, and when the battery gets deplated, the entrie product needs to be replaced. Also, once a new iPhone has been launched, the guarantee for the former iPhone ends instantly. Also, once a new OS of the iPhone, launches, its consumes more rescures and the battery life gets shorter.
Even new products that aren't made in China, tends to not last as long as the old products.

They definitely planned my iPhone 4 to be obsolete as soon as possible! I got it last July, and I'm betting on when it's gonna kick the bucket. It barely handled the iOS 7 invasion, and it is constantly doing all sorts of crazy stuff. One time, it got stuck in portrait lock and it wouldn't go back to landscape for anything. I had to reset it. Then another time, it wouldn't even let me in. The "Slide to Unlock" page wouldn't slide or unlock. I had to reset it. I don't get a new one until next July, if this one even happens to last that long.

My 5 year old iPod Touch 2G is still trooping along. Everything, including battery, still works perfect. Same for my 8 year old iPod 5G.

I have an iPod Touch 2G too! I quit using it since I got my iPhone. It's my emergency backup incase this thing gets stolen or taken or confiskated or blows up or what have you.

I use an iPad 2 and since installing IOS8 ( my mistake I know) it has become a slow and unresponsive piece of s****. The 3G keep randomly cutting out and needs a hard reboot to get it back. Also the wifi seems a whole lot slower. It's doing my head as when you click on something or make a multi-touch gesture, nothing happens for a few seconds.
Not happy!