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I could not believe this, so I looked it up. What I found was that in 2015 some Chinese minister complained that Chinese ball point pens were not on par with re

I could not believe this, so I looked it up. What I found was that in 2015 some Chinese minister complained that Chinese ball point pens were not on par with respect to writing quality when compared with non-Chinese ones. In 2017 they had this worked out and that made headlines in the West. Maybe there is more to this which I could not find right away, but as of now I could not find any evidence that China could not produce ball point pens 15 years ago, only that the quality was not top notch until 5 years ago.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
Ya, it’s a quality issue. Sort of like with jet turbines: China has no problem producing fast ones, but is not yet able to produce fast ones that don’t need to be overhauled every flight. Or semiconductors: it can produce modern sized chips, but the yields are not good enough to be economically competitive yet. But these are mostly a matter of going through the same 50 years of experimentation of materials and process that other countries did. For the balls in pens, I think there was one factory in Japan that did that very well, and they had no qualms about exporting them to China at reasonable prices, so China could make pens fine enough, just the ball used in n high quality ones (which, were the ones that would actually sell) used a ball imported from Japan. The minister was angry the pens weren’t 100% Chinese, rather than just 99% Chinese. One can easily imagine that there are many such components produced in China that other countries aren’t currently tooled to produce economically, so it’s not weird or very unprecedented that China wasn’t previously set up to make perfect balls for pens.
- jryle70 3y ago
  Yes, basically the incentive wasn't there for China to make the pen ball, not that it was impossible. The same dynamic is in play with bringing back manufacturing to the US. China is the manufacturing center of the world because it's more cost effective to do so there than in other parts of the world, including setting up supply chains. If that incentive is diminished or gone then other places will emerge. It took 20 years for China to get there basically from scratch. It will take much less to rebuild the capabilities in previous manufacturing hubs.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

Ya, it’s a quality issue. Sort of like with jet turbines: China has no problem producing fast ones, but is not yet able to produce fast ones that don’t need to be overhauled every flight. Or semiconductors: it can produce modern sized chips, but the yields are not good enough to be economically competitive yet. But these are mostly a matter of going through the same 50 years of experimentation of materials and process that other countries did. For the balls in pens, I think there was one factory in Japan that did that very well, and they had no qualms about exporting them to China at reasonable prices, so China could make pens fine enough, just the ball used in n high quality ones (which, were the ones that would actually sell) used a ball imported from Japan. The minister was angry the pens weren’t 100% Chinese, rather than just 99% Chinese. One can easily imagine that there are many such components produced in China that other countries aren’t currently tooled to produce economically, so it’s not weird or very unprecedented that China wasn’t previously set up to make perfect balls for pens.

jryle70 3y ago
Yes, basically the incentive wasn't there for China to make the pen ball, not that it was impossible. The same dynamic is in play with bringing back manufacturing to the US. China is the manufacturing center of the world because it's more cost effective to do so there than in other parts of the world, including setting up supply chains. If that incentive is diminished or gone then other places will emerge. It took 20 years for China to get there basically from scratch. It will take much less to rebuild the capabilities in previous manufacturing hubs.