Yes, too many things are made in China...
China has the know-how/capability to build good quality components....
The primary issues when purchasing from China are:
1. China has few natural resources, that why they import tons & tons of recycable material. And China's nature is to use the cheapest material available.
2. Though China manufactures a wide variety of products, many, many buyers have no on-site auditing quality control staff. The buyer doesn't find out about the poor qualty until the shipment arrives, then too late and no leverage..

We have made over 35 sourcing trips to China, and have purchased well >$350 million of products for a wide variety of clients and products There are no short-cuts, the purchase decision is made after the submission of approval samples, but then on-site monitoring/auditting is required to validate the product's quality. Our standard procedure was to have 10 random samples pulled from the mass production lot, air shipped to the USA, we would totally take the samples apart check specs/tolerances and if OK the shipment was released and payment made.

Just my $0.02...

One thing to add is the building down in quality that sometimes occurs. I read something a month or two ago by someone who had experience, maybe it was on this board? Anyway he wrote about how quality didn't go up as production went along, it could go down as the management decided to use lower quality materials or components to increase profits.

On the other hand, one thing the Chinese may be doing better than the US is, when they find a really bad bit of corporate malfeasance, they actually shoot the executives.

R.

Yeah....

Given the visible wear I'd say this failure was due to something else, not the rocker. That could have been a Harland Sharp rocker and the same thing would have happened to it.

I disagree, it looks like that rocker hole is on a slight angle or the needle bearing was installed cock slightly so the bearing end rub against the bottom part of the bearing end, something hard enough to wear into, eat into it, causing that failure

maybe it's just me, but i like bushed rockers better.
they might not extract the last horse power, but i don't like little needle bearings and ground up cage material floating around inside the engine.

Interesting points. If you look at extreme high speed shafting, you will typically find a sleeve (bushing) style bearing. The ball/needle rotational speed is just to high for a rolling contact bearing. At least that's how it was explained to me by a Sundyne engineer.

bearings are for rotating [spinning in a 360 degree circle] parts, bushings are more suited for parts that go in a "back and forth" motion.
my reasoning is that the bearings will wear evenly, as they will spin their complete diameter over their lifetime, therefore lasting longer than if they just went "back and forth", wearing on only part of their diameter. [and retaining race or part] think about a u-joint that has no grease, and the brinnilining that takes place on the cross, which is those little "lumps" or lines that are formed by the needles not rotating their complete diameter on the joint cross.
just my opinion. your mileage will vary.

GOOD rockers w/ bearings have very good service life. I had a set of Harland Sharps on a 440 that were bought new in the mid 1990s and had been on solid roller cams all their life. Never had an issue w/ the bearings. Had to replace two due to flaking on the roller tip, but that's it.
I know of many others w/ the same experience as mine.
I'm not arguing for or against bushings...just saying the good bearings work very well.
If you buy cheap stuff, you have to expect failures.

Why does Harland Sharp and Jesal do that ?
I've assemble and built hundreds of motors with Harland Sharp needle bearing rocker arm kits with no issues ever
I have also learned the hard way to not put that type of rocker arms, Chineze or Harland Sharps, on stock rocker shafts, they will eat those shafts up and spread the metal chips through out the motor ruining it

Yup, hardened shafts are the thing for HP use or needle bearings.
HS used to make bushed rockers, and I would think still can.
I've run HS needle & bushed style on various engines, and never had a problem.
A couple were hot street BBs (1 bushed, 1 needle), one a 368" LA drag motor that saw 7500-8000 RPM (needle).

Years ago at a PRI show, I picked up a Chinese needle roller rocker, and worked the pivots.
Felt like they'd put sand in the bearings...
Not a good place to save money, IMO.

Rocker arms are maybe the worst possible place to try to save money. If you could buy roller lifters for half the price of good ones I wouldn't buy them either for the same reasons.

Check out Mancini's rollers. They are made by harland sharp and the only difference I can see is no bearing on the pivot. I wouldnt skimp too much on rockers unless your running a relatively low lift cam. They take too much abuse for a low quality part to handle and when they go they can take out a lot of stuff.
https://www.manciniracing.com/ben15alro.html

Define low lift

Folks should run the info on the bearing inserts and cross for replacement options. If like many china rockers they are a universal size and the as delivered can be upgraded.

0.500"?

That's about where I put it too. But you never know what people are thinking.