I'm new to the forum and to the whole chinese cycling world, please take this into consideration.
I was going through the messages on this thread and similar ones and noticed that the safety aspect of buying those "heavily inspired" bikes (or straight up clones) isn't discussed much. Are those Seraph/TanTan clones really safe to ride?
And maybe a bit off-topic, but are there good value for money chinese brands that don't bother about copying frames (do their own or open molds), but are solid and can be trusted regarding quality and safety? I know about the ones such as Tavelo, Seka, Yoeleo, Winspace and etc, but those seem to be a bit "pricey" already
The book "factfulness" should be read in schools. It reminds us that things move on, whether we pay attention to it or not. China used to be very poor and unskilled. Now you can't count the interviews of very switched on people who point to China no longer 1. having cheap labor 2. only knowing to copy 3. only making crap (think Apple CEO, Uber CEO, Microsoft CEO, and so on).
You can also look at the case of gopro vs DJI & Insta360. Gopro (USA) is as good as dead, and failed on multiple fronts (drones, remaining the GOAT of action cameras). DJI & Insta360 (China) are leading the way now, doing both the production and, importantly, the innovation.
From that, you will find crap made in China, but you will also find the high end. This forum is about identifying the good factories from the bad ones.
Yes, Tantan is safe, but no, they're not perfect (lots of QC problems reported here). To be fair, they are a big animal churning out a lot of frames, so statistically, maybe we should expect a high number of duds, assuming a constant dud rate across the industry.
Most factories do NOT produce copies / fakes. I ride an open mould, for eg (Long teng 268, i posted about it many times). Also, because of aero design & UCI rules, frames tend to look alike now more than a few years back though.
Long teng, Speeder, xiamen carbon speed, velobuild are names i'd recommend. I wouldn't buy from Winow for various reasons.
And to be sure, paying more is absolutely no guarantee of getting more for your money. A lot of chinese pseudo brands are selling for 1k what you can get from another one for 500, minus the paint job. Often, you will find, unsurprisingly, that the "brands" promoted on youtube are the worst value (yoeleo is one perfect example of a 500 frame sold for 1000 because of the marketing / branding / referral codes).
This forum is truly a great resource.
