For sure, China is like the wild west!!,
Taking your experiences as examples of what can go wrong..
but that said, rip offs can happen in any country.
Do you have any advice on how to find out if a foreign company is legit?
Wild west china has a lot deeper meaning to it. Business cannot be run in wild mode.
It is too bad if you are into business and go into a financial loop. Money is the life line of any business, it dries up, game over. Banks have a credit valuation system based on which they grant you a loan. And its important to keep growing a business through loans. You cannot invest your own money into a business and not have proper money management. Bottom thing is, majority of chinese companies have excellent business from the west and they don't give a fu** if they loose a single customer or two or more.
They are large scale manufacturer's and they all are in debt to their banks. They have targets to be achieved and loans to be repaid. They have a minimum amount of expenditure to run the company and hence they have to bring in a minimum amount of sales profit to keep the company running. The bigger a non branded company the scarier it is to run. In all of this hassle they are eager to shift as much stuff possible to the buyers and bring in the money. At such a large scale, quality is compromised. They simply think of it as, its better to put the burden on the customer than to close the factory and thats how quality goes out the window. At that scale the director of the company is not interested in how the sales team is bringing in money, he is only interested in how much money the sales team is bringing in. That is why most of the chinese sellers on alibaba will never let you talk directly to their boss.
The chinese marketing people have their own life story to cover. they have a job to keep where population is high and internal competition fierce. To keep the sales target high and to create a better image with their boss, these sales people start misguiding buyers. The only thing they are interested is to see the money come into their account. The moment the money is transferred to them, you sense a change in their nature that was sweet. Legal documents are of no use when you are cheated by a chinese company. chinese laws are made to protect their own people. I have an Indian friend who lives in china and has been figting a legal case for Rs2,50,00,000/- Thats 2.5 crore rupee or 4,03,225 USD which he was cheated in goods. He lost that case and lost that money. They cheated him big time and got away with it. There are many cases like these pending in the chinese court and being compromised.
china has its own internal battle to fight. To feed such a big population and to keep internal instability in control the chinese leaders had to devise a plan to survive. This plan was made somewhere in the 1980 and later it was about mass production. But the effects this mass production strategy had on the people around the globe was and is massive! People who developed skills and who were passionate about their job lost them. They had to take up jobs that did not suit them. And this people loosing their job has happened here as well. Ok loosing a job is one thing. The other problem with that came is about inferior quality products that are making their way into the market. We are paying for goods that should make our lives easier, but these cheap goods make our lives harder in disguise. You pay for an item thats made in china and it breaks down within a month. You again have to pay for that kind of item to make your life easier. But the equation does not end there, you as a buyer also have to work to earn money to pay for that item again. That same money that was wasted on a single item twice, could have been used to buy yourself some other useful thing.
I will continue on the above topic tomorrow.....
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Talking about finding a legit company...
0] Common sense
1] Personally travel to the foreign company (that obviously can be done only in a big deal)
2] Ask for registration certificate of the company. Get info on how many labors that particular company has through labor law offices.
3] Note the date of registration and the number of directors.
4] Public limited company or private company.
5] Proprietorship based or partnership based company.
6] Company Turnover
7] Director contact details.(you should always be able to contact a company owner because the sales people don't care for the company but the director does.)
8] How much publicity that company has
9] Customer reference and their comments.
10] 3rd party inspection of the company.
11] Cross questioning the sales team and the hierarchy employees.
12] Cross questioning about the product (you should have sound knowledge about the product in discussion)
13] Not determining a company a legit based on its website!
14] ..............
Its late night here and I am tired and need to rest.....
Sorry for the long reply....I will finish it tomorrow. 
