As someone who used to be a high ranking outsourcer, I can say that I don't believe in "Chinese sydrome". Yes, 50% of swords are chinese fakes. Another 40% are most likely "western" repros - most of them nowadays probably also come from China, but that's not the point. The point is that >90% of swords on ebay is a modern junk, whether it's chinese, american ninja or XX century toledo does not really matter.
Sometimes it hurts, but we don't collect junk, so why should we pay attention to this crap ? Because one day they can start copying "real" swords ? Well, first of all, contrary to the popular belief, qualified, educated, not very corrupt and hard working people are _extremely_ rare in the third world (and they are actually rare in the first world too). They are also extremely expensive. It is possible to produce a top quality product in the third world and save lots of money, but it requires great skill and knowledge of the situation.
I can't even recount how many times I've seen long faces of our investors when they were asked to pay 6 figures salaries. It was usually taking them lots of time to come up with a polite way to say "but he is a third world scum, can't we give him some beads instead ?". Well, if you want performance of a savage, you can. That's why syrians and iranians pay 700$ a month to skilled mercenaries, while we think that iraqi "fast response" team members should be glad to have their 200$.
To summarize - it's cheap to produce crap in the thirld world, but it's not so cheap to produce quality. Chinese factory workers do not earn anything, but us or taiwanese managers and us educated engineers earn salaries that are very comparable with american ones. Making a good sword requires a very educated person, someone who can find a job in the first world as a restoration worker, or custom knife maker or something else like this, but chose to stay in China.
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