About
I am Ma Xiaobiao (Max). For seven years I worked inside Chinese battery and energy-storage manufacturing — as a product engineer, then as a solutions engineer quoting and delivering systems to customers.
Most English-language content about Chinese manufacturing is written by people whose experience of a factory is a scheduled tour. Mine is different in one way that matters: I have sat on the supplier side, writing the quotation, deciding what to put in it, and deciding what happens when a customer's specification turns out to be more expensive than the price I already gave them.
Because the gap is real. Inside China, everyone in the industry knows how this works — which supplier is actually a trading company, which cost line is soft, which certification was "arranged". Outside China, buyers are working from brochures and from agents who have their own margin to protect.
I am not writing to persuade anyone that China is good or bad at manufacturing. I am writing to close an information gap that costs ordinary buyers real money.
My genuine depth is batteries, energy storage and electromechanical products. When a question goes outside that, I will say so rather than improvise. The parts of sourcing that are category-independent — verifying a company, reading a quote, structuring payment, holding a factory to a sample — I can cover properly for almost any product.
Questions, corrections, or something you think I got wrong: hello@unfilteredchina.com. Corrections from people with better information are the most valuable email I get.
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