Cost is not everything. Quality matters a lot.

If things are of higher quality, higher cost is acceptable to many.

As a trivial example, talking about a ca. 5 EUR purchase here, I bought a German-made pencil sharpener (Möbius-Ruppert nr. 0603 "Vertex").

It's basically a small metallic block (brass) with two holes with blades attached. It is surprisingly heavy and while it may sound strange, the sharpening result is simply excellent. (I bought some Japanese-made pencils to pair with it)

Chinese sharpeners can be had for under 0.5 EUR at best, they can be very cheap.

However, I had Chinese sharpeners and they actually were the reason I ended up buying a German one. Unless I lose the German sharpener, I will never need to buy another.

Yeah well there are now plenty of Chinese designed products with quality as good or better than what you get in Europe: roborock, dji, bambu labs. The old Chinese = bad quality is no longer true.

One thing that the Chinese are really good at is cost innovation, reducing costs as many ways possible to make their products affordable for the majority. Their aim for good enough quality.

I bet the sales ratio of the Chinese vs the German sharpeners exceed 20:1