The Tecsuns are Chinese made but you get a lot for your money.
What can you get on shortwave?
Any SW radio will receive broadcast stations such as BBC World Service, China Radio International, Voice of Turkey, etc etc. There are fewer of these than there were, but there is still plenty to listen to. If travelling abroad to developing countries, where there may be no power, no internet, and natural or man-made disasters then access to reliable information is very useful - one traveller was near Chernobyl when the disaster happened, and the only non censored reliable info was from the BBC via short wave. So very good kit for interesting broadcasts or travel. Digital frequency readout is very very useful for broadcast listening, as stations publish their schedules. Occasionally you get oddities like clandestine stations opposed to a government, and Dutch pirate stations. There are also a lot of religious broadcasters.
Broadcast stations use AM and any radio will work. But if you want to listen to amateur radio, morse stations, VOLMET (weather for pilots), numbers stations (coded messages to spies - seriously), or use a laptop to decode data transmissions like PSK31, slow scan tv (from amateurs) or NAVTEX (weather for ships) or HF FAX (synoptic weather charts over radio) you need a set with single sideband (SSB). These will cost more.
There is no comparison between a dedicated desktop communications receiver with a wire aerial and antenna tuner, and a portable set. I have both - a Sony SW7600 for travel and an Elecraft K3 (actually a transceiver) connected to a 10 metre vertical antenna via automatic tuner. But the Sony costs about a hundred (Chinese equivalent about half that) and the Elecraft with all the filters will cost about £2500.
I bought one of these a while back and have it in my deployment bag.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/2206...ff11=ICEP3.0.0&ff12=67&ff13=80&ff14=95&ff19=0
I tested it and it seemed pretty good. It has all the features of the Sony SW100 but at about a fifth of the price. The case isn't as robust as the Sony but again you get what you pay for. If you want to try it out it's less of an investment than the more expensive ones. I daresay theres more details available on other subject forums.