James Mann's 2007 book, The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression, offered the perspective of a journalist and historian on the US political class voluntarily becoming mired in a deeper relationship with China. Now Paul Midler, who lived for many years on the mainland helping American companies outsource production, gives an anecdotal account of how US importers are being sucked into the Chinese market.

Poorly Made in China: An Insider's Account of the Tactics Behind China's Production Game, describes what Midler calls 'quality fade', a deliberate process of skimping on materials or using cheaper ones over time. Contracts and agreements mean little and mainland suppliers and manufacturers constantly subject importers to shocks and jolts by cutting corners. All the tricks of Sun Tzu's Art of War are deployed to keep foreign importers on tenterhooks.

Midler says he became so pessimistic about the prospects of persuading mainland factories to abide by contracted specifications that he sometimes advised his clients not to take some products for manufacture on the mainland.

'I was aware that by making such suggestions I was turning into a hypocrite, like the butcher who whispered to his customers that they ought to consider the value of a vegetarian diet,' he writes.

He saw so much of what went on in Guangdong's factories that he stopped using body wash and soap. No one who reads his book will be able to look at a bottle of shampoo, any 'herbal' concoction and many other products without wondering about their safety.

Midler has little time for the objection that Japan and western countries in the 1950s onwards went through a phase of poor-quality production. He points out that 'quality fade' problems have affected companies that imported not only huge quantities but had long-term ties with their mainland suppliers. A 'reverse frequent-flier' programme operates in many instances: the longer an importer stays with a mainland manufacturer, the worse a deal can become.

Given the Communist Party's tentacles among businesses, the absence of genuine trade unions or a free press and with whistle-blowers deemed traitors in the mainland's Confucian culture, there is little prospect of an early end to the problems facing many firms.

It would be a pity if Midler's book were to be dismissed as yet another exercise in China-bashing, for he is critical of businessmen who fly in, motivated by the greed of creating something cheaply and keeping a large profit, only to find the margin shrinking as their mainland counterparts run rings round them. In fact, he concludes with an all-too-brief criticism of US politicians and business leaders for having rushed into dependence on the mainland.

'This decision, to fling open wide the doors of trade with China - before we were ready, before China was ready, before we understood what we were getting into; an action motivated by our own greed - this decision more than anything else was the one thing related to China that was truly poorly made,' he says.

While it is a must-read for people engaged in mainland business, the book's liberal use of pseudonyms, the blogger's style of writing and the lack of an index mean it is unlikely to be regarded as a reference work.