Every time (yes, that's an absolute) I've purchased a product bearing a time-honored name having a well-earned reputation that had a history of U.S. or European manufacture that was made in China, it turned out to be a piece of junk. It mattered not whether it was garden equipment or power tools, all were sub-standard. I don't care to be a part of the experiment to see when the Chinese are going to do what the Japanese did.
It really varies with the manufacturer, who is to blame.
Example 1: I have a pair of Tannoy professional studio monitors. Tannoy is one of those European manufacturers with a very long tradition of quality. Although my monitors are cheap (around 500 euro a pair) they sell very high end stuff.
After maybe four years one of them begun to develop a problem. I suspected dodgy electrolitic capacitors. Doing a search on a specialized forum, I found an amazing account by a forum user. Turns out some retard decided to fix power resistors (components that get very hot) to the printed circuit board using a sort of glue that, with time and heat, degrades and becomes conductive.
In some cases, no real damage has been done (depending on how conductive the bloody glue becomes) and you can just clean up the circuit board.
That I did using a screwdriver. I assembled it again and voila! Restored monitor. I did it in 2012 and I haven't had any more problems.
This is an example of a careless outsourcing. You call a Chinese manufacturer, send your circuit diagrams, ask for several samples, you are happy with the samples and, that done, you just order volumes not caring much what they are doing, where they are sourcing the components and what are they putting inside.
A responsible brand would have people at the Chinese plant (of course it's expensive!) and they would be in full control of the supply chain making sure that only the specified components are used. Of course it's expensive.
And that's exactly what I meant with "outsourcing TO" or "manufacturing in". I have seen many high quality goods very well manufactured in China. Maybe the labor costs are, say, 50% compared to the European Union? To that you must add the cost of having some of your people there, and of course freights, etc.
The problem is brands who don't want to spend on quality control and manufacturing and supply chain supervision, which is crucial.
At the end some manufacturers at least will learn. I'm waiting for a Tannoy salesman to come visit me at the club, and to tell the story of a Tannoy ex-customer.
Also, there are Chinese manufacturers beginning to manufacture and market their own products with their own name, not hiding the fact at all. I have some Chinese microphones that give amazing results for the price. Of course I won't compare a 200 euro SE Electronics microphone to a 2000 euro Schoeps. But the sound you get with the 200 euro mike is quite good actually.
They have to learn a lot about product marketing and packaging, which is very important to be perceived as a quality brand. The instruction manuals are pathetic (so it was the Spanish translation of an expensive Sony short wave radio manufactured in 1976), they usually offer very incomplete technical data (in my case not untrue, just careless), they make changes to the models, their websites can often contain incomplete information or just are not updated to the latest models... but the product is at least worth the money it costs. And with time they will get better.