It's not China, some very high quality well built stuff comes out of China, they are certainly capable of producing it.
The problem is US (and other relatively wealthy) consumers demand the lowest prices, so stuff gets cost reduced to the hilt and built by the lowest bidder in places with the cheapest labor capable of doing the work and currently that's mostly China. As long as people demand goods for less than someone with a similar cost of living could build them for sale, this will be happening.
It is largely not the consumers, but the buyers for the large stores who led the stampede to junk.
I would love to go to a whitegoods shop & buy, say, an electric kettle which :-
(1)Worked properly
(2) Lasted for longer than 6-8months before expiring gracelessly.
I tried going "up market" & buying a well known brand.
At $A75, it should have been markedly better, but, no!
It lasted less time than the El Cheapo!(it was also made in the PRC, maybe in the same factory.)
Obviously, the same performance, coupled to one third of the price is a powerful reason to buy the cheaper one.
I eventually found a "unicorn"!----- an El Cheapo which works well, & is still doing so, "a year & a bit" later!
There are all sorts of "Chinese" products, from tne $600 "Wertheim" vacuum cleaner which purported to be "German designed", & wouldn't run for more than 15 minutes without shutting down from overheating, to the "Ozito" drum type vacuum cleaner at $50, which takes anything I throw at it without a hiccup, (but with a lot of noise), & which has already done more work than the Wertheim achieved all the time we had it.
Why would I buy poorly performing "upmarket junk".
A couple of years back, I bought a "vanity cabinet" for the bathroom, at a fairly stiff price.
This included a handbasin with a fancy combined hot/cold tap, an overflow vent to prevent overfilling the basin, complete with a nice chrome trim, & a push down/pop up "plug" assembly.
The push down/pop up thing failed first, when the spring got tired.
That wasn't much of a problem so we could ignore it.
Next, the "trim ring" around the overflow went green--bye, bye, chrome!
The best was left till last, when the fancy tap started leaking through pinholes corroded through the chrome & whatever sh*t metal it was made of.
By comparison, the taps which were replaced were around 50 years old, were made of brass, & had no "pinholes"!
This wasn't bought online from some dodgy site, but from a "reputable" plumbing supplier!