First, Thanks for actually saying thanks.
Second, this is gonna require a lot of typing.
Chinese culture, not to be confused with Japanese culture, which is very recent, but it's origins are very old. The Early Japanese migrated from Africa about 100,000 years ago and were called Negrito's. They lived in caves. It was not until about 300BC that the Chinese began going to Japan and exchange ideas. The Japanese had no culture to call their own and took everything from the Chinese even the Chinese language early on.
The history of pot making is well regarded around the world in China. Moving to today, The Japanese ever the user of mimicry, (my nice work for stealing everything from the Chinese) began making pottery around the twelfth century in and around Tokonoma Japan due to it's vast clay deposits. The area to us is renowned for bonsai pots but in Japan is king of the toilet, which is what Tokanoma makes the most of.
China has always had a huge amount of investment is innovation, and stealing intellectual property from around the world. It did not take long for the Chinese to begin to makes molds for increased production but also large machines called plug molders that can stamp out twelve pots a minute.
Pot making continued in Japan but much of the work was done by hand and still is to a large extant and some still use molds to press the clay into.
Thats the basics, and all of most affordable pots out of China are machine molded and fired on huge production lines. That is how they keep the cost down and contribute to the National Industry. Also, you will notice that these pots from China tend to be on the larger side, usually larger than 16 inches or more. Anyone that has bought a large pot from Japan knows the pain that can be, 500.00 to 1000.00 dollars easy. You can get 24 inch Royola pots that are very nice looking and large in the 60.00 to 100.00 range. quite a savings.
Here is a large Royola pot on the side of my yard collecting dust. about 26 inches across. I think I paid about 85.00 for it.
It has a very smooth finish and has no flaws, just a good functional pot. Just not made by Tofukuji. So 85.00 bucks.