While erasing chip marking sounds funny, how is that worse than using custom chip markings that many non-chinese manufacturers do for their products?
It is there to prevent simple reverse engineering, or rather blatant copying that is reality in China...
Also I would like to point that phrase"poor software design" might mean software that doesn't work up to it's own specs, or to a software that was done to specs, but specs were not well designed.. I would say that most of chinese T&M equipment shows they have good engineers, but have only 10-15 years of experience making it as opposed to 60+ years for EU or US manufacturers... That shows in the fact that are capable of making good hardware, but not being able to "envision" and therefore design feature set, UI and such, to make instrument both powerful, easy to use, and "cool"...
Also in former USSR and China, mentality "function over form" was prevalent. It could have been ugly and hard to use, it didn't matter. If it did the job, operator was supposed to learn how to use it and live with it shortcomings.. So scope is not complicated, it is operator that is not smart enough...
Some of that mentality is still there, but slowly going away...
And I wouldn't say 20 years... More like 10, judging by the speed of learning so far... Also they buy knowledge and technology at a fast pace, to complement their own research...