OpticsCamp

At one point it may have been true, but the trend with Asian manufacturing is moving more toward quality. Back when it was fashionable to outsource manufacturing overseas, it was mainly because it was much cheaper and helped bottom line. Obviously quality suffered, but that has changed in the last several years as many manufacturing firms have realized that they can't churn out crap and expect to keep contracts. Yes, some Chinese manufacturers are still lagging behind, but they'll eventually get weeded out.

A lot (most) of what Celestron manufactures comes from factories in China, and they're one of the biggest and most popular telescope companies in the world. And astronomy geeks are just as discriminating about their optics as hunters, if not more.

And here's a funny detail: A lot of those manufacturing facilities in China, ***an, and other Pacific rim nations are all owned by the same people. In a lot of cases, the only consideration given to where a product is manufactured is based on minimum labor costs. I know of at least one company who has all their parts manufactured in ***an and final product assembled in a factory in China for that reason.