Those of us that are old enough can recall the day that the term "Made in
Japan" was synonymous with cheap goods.
I did some websites for a company that marketed a well-designed air
purifier that was manufactured in China, and designed there, too.
They started getting an unusual number of returns, so they looked into the
guts of one of the returns and discovered that though the design really was
good the manufacturing process was amazingly shoddy. We wrote up a long
list of problems for the distibutor to discuss with the Chinese
factory. My guys then started doing 15 minutes of quality assurance on
each purifier, and developing a set of repairs when they ran into one of
the manufacturing glitsches.
The Chinese factory didn't freak out, they clearly felt that discovering
what they could not get away with out in the field and fixing those
problems was a natural part of their cycle, and over time they improved the
thing to where, after a year or two, quality assurance was no longer
necessary here. There were a bunch of issues, and they were all dealt with
over time.
This is to say that it's possible that Chinese factories that make goods
for export may very well try to get away with shoddy manufacturing
practices (including using unacceptible materials) until they find out
which problems are so obvious that they might affect sales, and then they
fix those problems. That would indicate that we should as a group figure
out how to test for lead and other nasties in our harps, and if any are
found (whether we know they're made in China or not) work as a group of
1600 harp players to let the distribs of any offending products know that
we would like for them to make sure that the problem is fixed, wherever
they're manufactured. Not being a SPAH member I don't know if it's my
place to suggest this, but SPAH might be the right body to pilot these
kinds of tests.
I think it is all a matter of business for Chinese manufacturers. Whatever
they can get away with, they'll get away with. Whatever they can't get
away with, they'll fix.