
What a ball pen tells us about China’s manufacturing weakness - jseliger
http://www.ejinsight.com/20160121-what-ball-pen-tells-us-about-china-s-manufacturing-weakness/
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mc32
No it doesn't. Rather it says a lot about global supply chains. This is
bullying and shaming with some nationalism thrown in for good measure (the one
entrepreneuress saying, importing those spherules ships your profits overseas,
bad, bad!). If Chinese manufacturers thought there was a big market for
precision ball point pens, they'd make them. But there isn't such market in
most of the world.

In any Chinese office, you'll have plenty of semi disposable pens, the likes
of papermates and bics. They don't really explode in your pocket.

Most of the world just want pens that write, they don't see pens as status
symbols. Other things take their place.

And even if we took the reprimand at face value, really, are the Swiss taking
in and rolling in the dough by selling these small spherules?

It was opportunistic bashing by some apparatchik who saw it fit to bash
industry who actually pulled the country out of dire poverty in a mere thirty
years.

~~~
brandmeyer
You missed some key details in the article - China does make 38 billion ball-
point pens per year, but doesn't make any of the balls in those pens. This is
a commentary on their ability to make the single precision element within the
pen.

~~~
iSnow
Why would the socket require less precision than the ball that goes into that
socket?

~~~
moron4hire
I also don't buy the story on just how much precision is required, considering
the ballpoint pen is a 128-year-old invention.

> it requires state-of-the-art machinery and cutting-edge computerized
> measurement equipment with pinpoint precision to produce, not to mention the
> ability to produce the high-quality steel material of which it is made.

 _Nobody_ had this in 1950, say nothing about 1888.

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donatj
I'm reasonably certain ball point pens existed long before computerized
manufacturing, despite the claims of the article. I'm no material scientist
but I believe there has to be better ways to manufacture a ball bearing than
computer controlled cutting?

~~~
rtb
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballpoint_pen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballpoint_pen)
\-- Wikipedia suggests that the ball point pen was first invented in the late
19th century, but that they didn't catch on until after WWII because they need
"modern chemistry and precision manufacturing capabilities", which sounds
consistent with the claims in this article.

~~~
achow
In USA Ballpoint pen was introduced on 29 Oct 1945, but the reliable ones
(made by BIC) was launched in 1959. [http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-enduring-
genius-of-the-ballp...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-enduring-genius-of-
the-ballpoint-pen-1433512313)

Anything produced in 50s, I'm sure can be easily produced by any nation today,
leave alone China.

~~~
rayiner
Any nation could produce supersonic aircraft, nuclear reactors, and satellites
and the launchers to send them to space?

~~~
achow
> Any nation could produce supersonic aircraft, nuclear reactors...

These are not industrial mass produced items made by machines. 1950s
industrial setup can be duplicated by any country today on their own.

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bane
Precision equipment manufacturing is _hard_. It's easy to get round balls, but
to get them consistently within a certain tolerance in yields that would beat
just importing them is even harder.

I can't find the article now, but I remember reading about the manufacture of
a certain kind of high quality lenses and at the time, the place with the
highest quality manufacturing capacity was a couple tiny factories in Japan.
At some point the technology to make lenses at that quality and yield had been
R&D'd in Japan and there it sits.

Nobody feels like dumping a few hundred million (or billion) into matching
that capability when they can just order them from these places at $20 a pop
in volume.

"But", people say, "China makes all kinds of high-tech goods!". Sorta, is the
answer. China does final assembly on tons of things, but many of the
components, ultra-precision parts, are made elsewhere: CPUs, DSPs, Memory,
Displays etc. China is getting there as market forces allow, but there often
isn't a good reason to try to achieve parity or leapfrog suppliers who you
already have good relationships with and who sell you product at reasonable
prices.

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redwood
Presumably plenty of higher end shops in China _could_ produce such a ball,
but inertia and economies of scale from current producers probably make it
less valuable to pursue.

Some high end optics, semiconductors, etc perhaps China really cannot yet
produce.

~~~
tyingq
The article claims that they _could_ produce such a ball, but choose not to
because of the high initial investment combined with the weak IP law in China.

No sense in footing the bill for the needed R&D, when your investment will be
quickly stolen by the local competition.

~~~
pcrh
I suspect IP isn't really the question here. After all, the required balls are
made in "Germany, Switzerland or Japan" so I doubt they couldn't be made in
China, if someone wished to.

On another note, the article neatly taps into the chip many Chinese have on
their shoulder when it comes to be recognized as "equal" to Western countries.
In reality, and according to the principle of comparative advantage, no two
countries would ever be equal in all things. And that's not a bad thing.

~~~
tyingq
I'm no expert, but we do import quite a bit of a specific type of electronics
from China. The various companies steal from each other with impunity. Not
just ideas...like specific microcode for example. The physical proximity, plus
the fact that it's not technically illegal makes it easy.

Stealing from Germany/Switzerland/Japan might have consequences, at least for
exporting to where you stole from. It's also not as easy as just hiring away
an expert from down the street.

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teawithcarl
In the early days a joke circulated around Beijing in "China hand" circles as
follows:

What's the difference between a Hong Kong Chinese and a mainland Chinese?

The Hong Kong Chinese knows the difference between 1/100th and 1/1000th of an
inch.

By the way, Li Keqiang (#2 in China leadership) is a fantastic scientist,
wonderfully inquisitive/open-minded about knowledge, and is encyclopedic.
Great guy.

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zubiaur
Alibaba is full of chinese manufacturers offering tungsten carbide balls for
pens, pen tips and all sorts of precision pen parts.

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dogma1138
Ball point pens were made since the 19th century the balls were (and I'm
pretty much sure that still are) made by dropping liquid metal into a coolant
with high viscosity so they'll turn into spheres and then tumbled with an
abrasive material usually fine sand or glass to make them smooth.

You do not need sophisticated equipment and especially not some high end CNC
machining to make balls from metal what is this nonsense?

EDIT: Found a video from BIC basically tungsten carbide droplets abrasively
tumbled into perfect spheres (this is basic physics as they always want to
tumble around their center of mass they end up being pretty close to being
perfect spheres)
[https://youtu.be/D0OyjRgUBns?t=43](https://youtu.be/D0OyjRgUBns?t=43)

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DominikR
What a biased article. I'm interested in learning about the strengths and
weaknesses of many cultures and countries (including China) but reducing it to
"China can't build working pens therefore they suck" is not just cheap but
also an insult to our intelligence.

~~~
JamisonM
I don't think that the article said "China can't build working pens therefore
they suck" and I also do not think it was offering any sort of commentary on
"culture" in the first place. Instead it was offering opinions on how the
structure of the economy, etc. was holding the country back from moving up the
value-added production food chain.

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ckozlowski
I though this sounded familiar. Here's another article on it from a few weeks
ago. Some of you might like the tone a bit better:
[http://www.marketplace.org/2015/12/10/world/why-cant-
china-m...](http://www.marketplace.org/2015/12/10/world/why-cant-china-make-
good-ballpoint-pen)

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rpenm
0.1mm balls are unusual - 1.0mm is more typical (eg. standard BIC pens).

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wahsd
I thought that was the whole point of trade, that you specialize. What
nonsense.

~~~
donatj
Milton Friedman has a wonderful short lecture on this, about pencils no less.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Gppi-O3a8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Gppi-O3a8)

