How does one know when something is made well?

Easy, so long the Project receives the direct blessings from the Most Top Leader.

When the majority says its well...

When the product doesn't say "made in China."

Obviously the people building a space laboratory module are different people to those building roads, with different training and education. As you point out "it is rocket science" and is looked upon and treated as such and the production workers are highly trained. I imagine the powers that be think along the same lines as you "A highway doesn't require the same precision", but I feel that roads in the West have more technology incorporated in them than do those of China. For example, there are many different kinds of tarmacadam giving different kinds of grip for tyres, in places where experience has shown that braking efficiency needs to be greater and there are sensors built into roads for traffic control e.g, for traffic lights. This will come, eventually, in China. When I first came to China 11 years ago, university teachers did not have cars. Very few people, had cars. Beijing still had many bicycles, and the roads did not get the punishment from so much traffic especially very heavily laden lorries that now abound. So China is still learning what is necessary for roads to be good and safe. It is the same with the environment and health and safety. China has come a long way in the last 30 years and the Chinese people have as a nation, never been so well off, but for most it is like the Industrial Revolution of the West which took, say, 200 years. It is difficult for China to keep up with the aforementioned factors of society, but it seems to me they do address the problems as they arise, and the progress including those things is relentless, and will mean better lives for even more Chinese. As Deng Xiao Ping said "We are feeling for the stones as we cross the river". They certainly are finding the stones and making progress that has astonished the world. As they say "Rome wasn't built in a day" and neither was the infrastructure of this miracle of China. Give them time, all will be well. EDIT Conclusion In other words, there is an awareness through the decades, nay, couple of centuries that the West has of problems in a developing industrial and commercial society. China pre-1980s was almost entirely an agricultural society; they are still developing this awareness and then making laws and rules and regulations to cope with the different problems whether they appertain to roads or environment or other parts of society. It is too easy for foreigners who have been used to different standards to criticise them.