China sourcing better with an agent

I want to give an indepth detail and knowledge on how to source products from China and how not to get scammed. China is a complicated country to deal with, due to its cultural differences from the west. Alibaba is not the best sourcing and buying platform to find better prices from China because 70% of the companies are traders and not manufacturers. The small manufacturers, who can give way better prices are not even on Alibaba or any platform, because they don't find it beneficial to be online. They are hidden factories which manufacture with less than 50 employees and their production is capacity is lower than larger factories, but because their overheads are low, they can give much better prices. Even though their production capacity is low they can still give faster deliveries because they don't have as many orders. The advantage of having an agent in China is that, the agent has personal relations and contact with thousands of such factories all over China. China was a very poor country and very underdeveloped just 20 years ago, but because they started opening up to the world more, they made lots of money and therefore these small manufacturers became rich in no time. They went from driving tricycles to a Porsche Cayenne or an Audi A8. By the way, they drive the cars just like bicycles in the small cities. If you deal with an agent who handles all your work in China from product development, designing to inspection, shipping and documentation for export then you can concentrate on the sales part of the product, while the Agent can handle all the China part