It depends on what kind of IC you need. If you need an authentic part that has been tracked and verified through every step of distribution, you pay a premium.

For hobby products, sure. Spend 30 cents on that 5 dollar part.

However, a bad batch of fake ICs could potentially cost a company millions of dollars in returns, or worst case, liability lawsuits. (It has personally only cost me a few bucks and some wasted time.)

My personal trust in any Chinese sourced electronics is zero. It's less than zero if I attempt to buy a proper name brand IC. I ain't salty about it since I know my odds of getting defective or improperly labeled (or relabeled) parts: Expect about a 30% failure rate or parts that are way out of spec.

Simply put, QA is generally poor and the supply chain is sketchy. If that doesn't matter to you, so be it.

What happens is it chips do come from the same Chinese manufacturer, you can get spectacularly different grades of parts depending on how you bought them.