Are you the guy who drove out to Brooks I was hearing about?
Anyways if you mean performance measured by speed and such yes China clones perform better out of the box since Japan has strict FPS limits on their guns (I believe it was something like 330-350 on .20's).
If you mean by reliability then TM hands down since they are less prone to breaking or so I've heard due to less stress on the internals and higher QC on their products.
I've heard CA used to be dreaded because of the hit or miss quality, but their QC has improved greatly since those days. It's still sometimes hit or miss in terms of lemons and such but they have less lemons going out now.
Are you by any chance in contact with the new Lethbridge team? (They play at coulee runners paintball)