I can't find an original source for that. Maybe he said it, maybe there have been several misquotes. More anecdotally, we all know how much people like to mock

I can't find an original source for that. Maybe he said it, maybe there have been several misquotes. More anecdotally, we all know how much people like to mock Chinese manufacturing as purely copy-cat and low quality. You can almost see the glee dripping off the articles about the ballpoint. I'm pretty sure you can imagine someone with a failed ball-point saying "probably made in China". This doesn't mean it's untrue, but it does mean there's likely a bias. It's not entirely unbelievable that they couldn't do this to a sufficient standard at all. I'm just saying it's more believable that they could, but couldn't do it to an excellent standard.