The full history of commerce. :p I'd suggest looking at the history of food and drug regulation and testing, or weights and measures regulation if you want more. The early years of both UK and US food and pharmaceutical regulation is terrifying!
TL;DR Immature locations cut more corners. More regulation, experience and reputation helps. Consumers are naive. Manufacturers want you to buy the same things many times over your life.
In all markets, There's always going to be someone willing to cut corners to secure a place in a market, or make a fast buck in a mature market. Or maybe it's a new market that can't yet have matured. That's only part of the problem.
As markets mature regulation increases and companies tend to trade more on reputation (not always deserved of course. eg Beats headphones). Now there's an opportunity to trade on the good reputation of wherever (Proudly Made in America! / Britain! / Japan!), whilst selling you cheap crap. That's the other half of the problem. The meaningless label to tell the consumer it's made wherever they currrently believe is good.
In the early 80s most things Japanese were crap. Hifi sounded awful, but had lots of LEDs. Bolts, tools and vehicles were made of soft cheese. Their stainless steel rusted (I kid you not)! Honda made cam chains of special stretchy metal and probably accidentally invented cheese strings. Now Denon make very nice hifi, Teng make very nice tools and their cars are pretty reliable.
Why pay £50 for a Snap On or Britool[1] spanner when there's an almost identically packaged one, made in the same place, for £3 or £40? Only one will last longer than you in daily use. One risks breaking on first use.
So, it would be more accurate to say "isn't there a reason cheap tools break", "cheap materials break", "consumers naively expect $100 quality for $3.99" or "dishonest people are dishonest" than blame a specific locality.
The ONLY thing that has changed is all manufacturers adding built in obsolescence whenever possible. Now even the premium item is made to last "just long enough" (to get away with), but that doesn't make any one location especially good or bad at making stuff.
The only thing geography introduces is the further away it's made, the harder it is to audit your supply chain. Racism and nationalism has no relevance however.
[1] They're no longer British, or often made in Sheffield, they're just another meaningless brand of Stanley trading on 100 years of reputation. You're actually better served buying Teng these days.
