
A Chinese company now manufactures stainless steel tip cases for ballpoint pens - lunchladydoris
https://qz.com/881960/the-humble-ballpoint-pen-has-become-a-new-symbol-of-chinas-innovation-economy/
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rfdub
I don't really think "innovation" can be defined as replicating manufacturing
processes developed 100 years ago. This is simply playing catch up in terms of
manufacturing processes and quality control.

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blackguardx
There is also the material science of the rolling ball itself. I assume it has
similar constraints to high quality bearings.

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nom
Good point. But if they can't manufacture ballpoint pens, how can they make
bearings? Maybe it's due to their small size?

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ohazi
This article is talking about the tip _casing_ , not the actual ball.

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blackguardx
I took that to mean the ball and the housing around it. The casing would
function similarly to a bearing race and the ball to well, a bearing ball.

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myrandomcomment
So what this is saying is that the government of China gives money to fund the
development of very specific industries which in reality could count as a
subsidy under WTO rules. Yet, they want free access to our markets, but close
off theirs? Something seems wrong with this.

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omarforgotpwd
It sounds to me like the time and energy it took to develop this pen tip could
have been better spent elsewhere. Rather than highlighting Chinese innovation,
for me this highlights an overly politicized Chinese economy that puts
independence from foreigners over efficiency and specialization. I guess you
could possible say the same thing about the US these days though.

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panzer_wyrm
The west biggest mistake - thinking that you could outsource the bottom layers
of the value pyramid and there won't be local layers forming on top of them.

And when china achieve scale on something with good quality - game over man,
game over.

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lacampbell
_And when china achieve scale on something with good quality - game over man,
game over._

Why do you think that will happen? The chinese labour force is rapidly
shrinking, lower end manufacturing is starting to move south, and they've just
figured out ball point pens. I don't see a bright future for them at all.

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nopinsight
The expertise and supply chains for mass scale manufacturing are in China.
There are many products that can't be economically manufactured almost
anywhere else. They graduate many high quality engineers and researchers and
they spend a huge sum on R&D annually (more than many developed nations
with/without PPP adjustment). They are addressing labor shortage with robots.

China's R&D budget is 2nd in the world (only behind the US and ahead of the
EU) when PPP adjusted:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_researc...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending?wprov=sfla1)

"In the five-year plan it announced last year, the national government said
China would boost its annual production of industrial robots to 100,000 by
2020.

At the current rate, the country is on track to exceed that target, assuming
the numbers from the statistics bureau can be trusted—not a given in China
(the bureau did not respond to questions Quartz sent by email). Meanwhile,
over 3,000 industrial robot makers have surfaced in the country in the past
five years, according to the China Robot Industry Alliance, a trade group.

China is already the world’s largest producer of industrial robots, supplying
about 27% of the global market since 2015, according to the International
Federation of Robotics (IFR). It’s also the largest buyer of robots. According
to the IFR and Bernstein Research, China’s factories spent over $3 billion
acquiring industrial robots in 2015."

[https://qz.com/922742/china-is-rapidly-making-robots-that-
wi...](https://qz.com/922742/china-is-rapidly-making-robots-that-will-one-day-
manufacture-everything-you-buy/)

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myrandomcomment
There are some companies that are moving out of China because of large
increase of cost of manufacturing and a decline in the quality of the talent.
A startup I was at started in San Jose for prototypes, China for production
for a few years then moved to Penang, Malaysia. It was a very high tech
product with a large supply chain.

Also, there have been a few stories in the past year on HN discussing the
quality of engineers that the Chinese education system is turning out.

The contract manufactures in China like Flextronics and Jabil have locations
outside of China now and are expanding them. Heck from this map - Jabil has
more outside of China:

[http://www.jabil.com/locations/](http://www.jabil.com/locations/)

