I agree with what you experienced in China, Here the bigger company used a lot imported brand printers, rather than a local one, one point is the import printer do have a higher quality both finishing and printing, another point, maybe the most important one, is the brand printer can bring much more margin and business, especially for gov project.
Since so many brand or company, their products are made in China, but under different quality control system, those products sold to the world, we can not say it is too much better quality than local brand, but they persuit their customer by service.
Printer is just printer, we need its running to print money, when it breaks, someone right there to fix it, that is it. Sometimes, service more than products itself.
Trust the quality and performance of the products from China, but doubt about their service. You do the right choice.
I should add, from my recent trip to China where I visited over 10 different printing companies, overwhelmingly, the Chinese printing companies all use MUTOH valuejets. The largest printing company I visited had over 80 Mutoh 1604's in one room.
They informed me that they are made locally for the Chinese market. Based on this, I would be buying a Chinese made Mutoh and get it shipped to Australia where I can get local support.
Funnily enough, very few Chinese printing companies use Chinese printers except for Mutoh's. They prefer Korean made UV printers or EFI VUTEK's.
Did not see a single Roland or Mimaki printers. I also add, that over the last five years I have been visiting China and using Chinese printing companies, their quality of print, service and expertise is coming along in leaps and bounds.
Cheers
PS. Plus they are friendly and have honor, something I don't always find here in Oz.