From what I've read, CDs made in Japan and Austria/Germany are higher quality than Taiwan. CDs from different brands are usually made in the exact same plant, so it's the plant, not the brand name, that matters.
I've only seen CDs from Austria once, Sony CD-R_Musics from Wal-mart. I've only seen Japanese ones [TDK] once as well. Supposedly TDK and Philips were all Japanese made, but I can't find any that are anymore. I bought 150 Office Depot brand CD-Rs [Taiwan] about 3 years ago for making cheap CDs to leave in the car, etc, and never had a failure, only some skipping from where they were scratched. I think the heat is /finally/ getting to them [I'm in South FL], but most of them still work. There's a few 'good' CD backups of my copy of the White Album and other full albums [I won't leave my good albums in the car, so I back them all up onto CD and leave 'em in a binder] that I made from Phillips Guaranteed For 100 Days Of Direct Sunlight CDs [Taiwan] that Wal-Mart used to carry, but I can't find anymore]. These are still going fine as well, but the Office Depot ones don't seem to be any better/worse.
For data backups, I've been using Memorex [Taiwan] whenever I can get them for at least 50/$10 [just bought another 100 from Best Buy last week]. I've had a few of those in the car from when I ran out of Office Depot brand last year, and they're still going fine. I have little worry about the ones that are kept inside in air conditioning failing. I never buy unlabeled or generic ones other than the Office Depot brand. I've been meaning to test PNY though, since they're not specifically a 'generic' company. I have some very old Maxell CD-Rs from when I first got my CD burner, and they're still working fine as well. I thought they had failed, once, but it was my CD-ROM that was full of dust.