The order of the world right now is that the thing should be cheap and affordable. India and China have a very cheap human labour. Anything produced here will cost much less then made in other countries.
As the population of the world increases the demand for goods increases. Some years ago people used to buy things that would stand the test of time and were the best. If it stopped working for a reason they would fix it. Nowadays people don't have time to keep a thing for such long and even to get it fixed. If it is cheap and readily available, throw it, buy a new one. Thats the philosophy.
The entrepreneurs in Italy should understand this. Ferrari is a top class car while the Nano is just the worlds cheapest car. The use and throw variety. But tell me how many people can afford a ferrari and how many will buy a nano. This was just an example.

This is true, those are the same explanation I heard here about.
Nevertheless, Ferrari is a good investment, and the factory business are growing stronger every day. If I had to buy a actions I'd buy Ferrari's not Nano's.
Consumer market stands with the parameters you have listed, no way. But industry market goes another path. The matter of fact, Chinese buy old Europeans machines to rebuild them up. They buy cheap junk, they invest low budget for renew the machines up, and with a little investment they have a good old machinery. As you say workmanship is at extremely low cost in China, they can afford the use of those low production machines not anymore convenient to use in Europe.
The use-and-throw philosophy works in about the 75% the case. But the rest of 25% is still good old fashion new tech stuff. But, this must be really good old fashion made new tech stuff.
It happens, that in Italy this is misunderstood, and the market offers very expensive good looking, new tech old fashion goods. But, if you take a closer look, you can see that it is cheap renewed look, a little better than Chinese use and litter, mostly manufactured in China for Italians. This is a reason of good health of the few high quality, really fine Made in Italy style goods, and bankruptcy of some "smart" driven factories.
Anyway, this is not the real core of the problem I see. This commercial "cancer" lives behind the fact that apparently, Italians are unable to "use" what they already get. If you have a lot of low cost workmanship you can make Nano cars if you don't you must own Ferrari tech and make Ferrari for people who can afford it. Forget to sell as many Ferrari as Nano does. You need to own technology and knowledge over high quality workmanship and skilled professionals to make a Ferrari out, nevertheless I have never seen Ferrari, Armani, Rolex, Lucien Rochat, Ademars Piquet in real bad economical situation. But I had seen Fiat, not as bad as Nano, about to declare bankruptcy some times ago because they didn't invested the right way.
Still worse, there are many small factories, with high skilled people and tech know-how that produce small market machines that are disappearing, just because of bad administration.
I found myself involved in so many of these situations where I grow up the capacity, instruments, software, computers, hardware, that cost me a lot in terms of pure money, and time to learn and know-how... and after a few plants made, I had to change product tech, and lern a bunch of new know-how because that factory had gone to bankruptcy, for just the reason of a wrong administration. And sometimes tech too.
Off course, it has never been my fault.:sshhh:
Cheers
Larry.