Many branded items across a wide range of products are made in countries such as China, Taiwan etc. I have no problem with purchasing items from those countries at all but an awful lot depends on the quality control. Well known suppliers have often got very good quality control systems in place both in the manufacturing country and on receipt of items. Personally, for items where safety is involved I tend to purchase known brands.........but even these can have issues sometimes.
As said, its all in the machining tolerances. My only dalliance with cheap levers resulted in a clutch that wouldn't quite release, and would slip. To visually compare the original and cheap lever, you would be hard-pressed to spot a difference, but clearly the cheap lever had a millimetre or 2 extra metal on the return stop. Now, take that lax machining tolerance, and apply it to the pivot bushing, or on folding levers, the folding hinge. You end up with a lever that will either rattle around due to too loose pivots (which will end up applying force to the master cylinder in not-quite-perpendicular fashion, which will end up damaging it) or a pivot that is too tight and risks binding up altogether (repeated use of a tight pivot will produce swarf, which will eventually bind it solid, possibly at the most in-opportune moment!). The above is clearly very much a worse-case scenario, and you have every chance that the levers you buy are perfectly machined...... but the above is simply my thought process in opting to never again buy cheap non-brand levers.
