Things like simple microcontrollers with only USB 2.0 support are still the cheapest around plus they have other upsides over the stuff supporting USB 3.0 - namelly being simpler, less powerful and hence consuming less power, so for some things they’re the best option because you don’t really need the processing power of an ARM core - and then there are all sorts of hardware single purpose integrated USB 2.0 and even USB 1.0 microchips (which implement a single, hardcoded, part of the USB protocol), so it makes some sense for the cheapest devices to not have support for USB PD charging or other USB 3.0 functionality.
From my experience with Chinese suppliers (ages ago) it’s almost the opposite of what you say: the competition over there is crazy and almost always price based, so they’ll do crazy shit to shave some cents off the price of their hardware, hence all sorts of cheap hardware from China which comes with a USB-C connector but really only supports USB 2.0 or earlier charging, hence USB-C is realy doing stuff the same way as in the USB-A times.
Also a lot of small Chinese electronics manufacturers aren’t exactly sophisticated in their in-house design capabilities, IMHO: there are a lot of cottage factories over there doing simple electronics like keyboards or mice (or even simpler) were most of the complexity is in some easy to use integrated circuits that somebody else designed (and then right next to those guys there are others designing their own Single Board Computers or Smarthphones)
Things like simple microcontrollers with only USB 2.0 support are still the cheapest around plus they have other upsides over the stuff supporting USB 3.0 - namelly being simpler, less powerful and hence consuming less power, so for some things they’re the best option because you don’t really need the processing power of an ARM core - and then there are all sorts of hardware single purpose integrated USB 2.0 and even USB 1.0 microchips (which implement a single, hardcoded, part of the USB protocol), so it makes some sense for the cheapest devices to not have support for USB PD charging or other USB 3.0 functionality.
From my experience with Chinese suppliers (ages ago) it’s almost the opposite of what you say: the competition over there is crazy and almost always price based, so they’ll do crazy shit to shave some cents off the price of their hardware, hence all sorts of cheap hardware from China which comes with a USB-C connector but really only supports USB 2.0 or earlier charging, hence USB-C is realy doing stuff the same way as in the USB-A times.
Also a lot of small Chinese electronics manufacturers aren’t exactly sophisticated in their in-house design capabilities, IMHO: there are a lot of cottage factories over there doing simple electronics like keyboards or mice (or even simpler) were most of the complexity is in some easy to use integrated circuits that somebody else designed (and then right next to those guys there are others designing their own Single Board Computers or Smarthphones)