Howa in Japan (not China, Korea, etc.) currently produces the Howa brand rifles and the Weatherby Vanguard rifles. Howa has produced rifles for others in the past like Mossberg, Interarms, and S/W. They have been around in this country for 30+ years as either Howa's or as re-badged rifles (Weatherby Vanguard for example). It's a solid, well made, dependable, rugged and accurate rifle. Not cheap 'China' crap. I know for a fact that any recent Howa receiver is drilled and tapped for Remington 700 bases. I do however strongly suspect that it's been this way for a long, long time. Of course you need to pay attention to long action vs short action with the one piece bases. As for your particular setup, you have it right, the windage screws do in fact 'hang over' the receiver just slightly. Don't worry about it, it's meant to be that way. Don't turn the base around so that the windage screws are facing the rear as you have found out you end up with clearance issues. As a side note I've always found it somewhat nessary to use medium strength Loctite on the windage screws. You want them to tighten them with a large hollow ground screwdriver snug but not super tight. As for me I mostly use Leupold bases and rings, they just work great. On my .308Win Howa I needed an offset front base to get the proper eye relief. Just my two cents.
