Yea I'm hoping somebody can provide a list of various manufacturers and part names similar to the article..

My article includes the Holtek HT-66, the STCmicro STC8, the Nuvoton N76, and the ST STM8 — all hover in the 1-2 RMB range (especially when purchased in volume from within the mainland).

The STC8 and N76 parts are 8051, the other two are their own design. The HT-66 looks very much like a PIC16 part, and IDE and compiler are totally free.

The STM8 is probably the best-performing part in that price range, and has a free IDE and compiler.

My review includes pretty extensive discussion on the main page, plus separate reviews for all these parts — check it out and let me know if I need to clarify anything!

This is a great blog post but I'd also like to throw in that the STM line has a pretty great linux toolchain (official or not, I'm not sure).

I made a repository for the toolchain necessary to get STM boards working here: https://github.com/abraithwaite/STM32

Although it's outdated, the links at the bottom appear to link to updated tools which are presumably better :-)

Yeah, the STM8S003 is pretty hard to beat around $0.25, with excelent code-density, free IAR development and a very assembly-friendly architecture.