High precision, high volume, low labor input manufacturing is much harder than you'd think and not exactly what China's economy specialized in until it became a

High precision, high volume, low labor input manufacturing is much harder than you'd think and not exactly what China's economy specialized in until it became an explicit focus of the central government. The electronics and computing world outsourced everything to Asia back when those sectors were dirty and labor intensive. Manufactured items such as ballpoint pens (particularly the ball and tip which we the biggest stumbling block for China) were made with processes so highly automated and done so with decades of gradual refinement that there was no natural incentive for existing companies to invest in Chinese production facilities. Certain manufacturing niches were so competitive and easily optimized in the decades before global outsourcing became the rule that there were practically no benefits to moving production overseas and without the sort of "free" knowledge transfer that comes with such a move, there was no economic case for Chinese industrialists to try and build native capabilities from scratch.