The chinese have been makining these things (outboards and cars, ect) a lot longer than we know. Russia is loaded with them.We havent known about them mainly because we aren't a "traditional" market for these people, we are a "speculative" market for a lot of these goods that they are only recently testing the water with. If you look seriously into the origin of lots of your goods, it is very hard to buy "Japanese" any more. Your indonesian made Hilux, Spanish made Navara, Indonesian made Triton, ect are all wearing supposed Japanese badges.
A lot of people forget the looks you used to get turning up at the boatramp with anything other than an American outboard on a Quintrex towed by a Holden/Ford.
You'll always hear the bad before the good about something, and you can manipulate any statistics you want to put across the message you want (the government do it all the time)