There is inevitably a conflict of interest, I supposed. After all, companies pay the independent laboratories to test their products for certifications.
But if independent testing laboratories such as UL and ETL are accorded OSHA's (Occupational Safety & Health Administration) recognition as NRTL (Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory), it is not impossible for the government to enforce the labs to deny certification testings to companies which have been suspected or guilty of changing their components after being certified, where failure to do so may result in their OSHA's recognition being revoked. The lab could also revoked the certification given to these companies' products. The labs would naturally only do that if they value their OSHA's recognition more than the paychecks from their customers. Not sure if I am being too naive or harsh here.
Of course, the companies may argue that lemons may exist in their certified models. But it was pretty obvious of Uni-Trend's non-compliance when there were so many reviews/reports of their European UT61E batch being constructed differently than the Asian UT61E, which had worse components but received better CAT ratings. Cough cough, ETL...so much for being OSHA's NRTL.
The issue is there is no real "policeman" at the moment. Therefore, I support the calling out of dubious CAT-ratings meters in this thread as a more direct move rather than waiting for the government to stretch its heavy bureaucratic hand in this matter. May the market forces lead the Chinese manufacturers to the right path.
With that being said, we must realize a large portion of the electronic hobbyists don't see the risks of using Chinese meters as they usually deal with low voltages - a point which I may not totally agree but can understand. The price margin between a brand name (US/German/Japan ones) and the Chinese ones is a huge factor. Can the pricing of brand name products ever compete with the Chinese ones? I believe they can to a certain extent, given their insane markups. But I doubt they would want to, given the investors-heavy burden of these brand name companies. The Chinese companies have less of such problems as they based their profits on volume sales.
From what I see, the consistent comment here is "Cheap multimeters have their place but I would only trust my properly-certified meters for mains". In other words, the users buy both the cheap and expensive meters for different uses and the companies win. The market's desire for safer Chinese meters and cheaper brand name meters seems to be generally ignored. From the Chinese market, so far, only Uni-T has less than a handful of more believable CAT-Ratings meters like UT139C. I wonder why. Fluke has only caved in a bit to the market producing lower-priced Chinese meters. However, the price margin is still quite apparent to many. Brymen is so successful in this forum possibly due to the battle between the typical brand names vs Chinese companies and of course, due to our Dave Jones. I don't know how much the companies listen but the least we must do is speak. So kudos to all those who contribute to this forum and Youtube (sadly, not available in China).