Why can't China make a good ballpoint pen?
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Why can't China make a good ballpoint pen?
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Re: Why can't China make a good ballpoint pen?
#2A decline in low-quality Chinese goods would certainly be a boon for the environment. The amount of waste plastic from discarded pens alone must be huge.
Re: Why can't China make a good ballpoint pen?
#3I think the key point that he's missing is that the chinese manufacturers are now manufacturing to the market's demand, and this is why China is growing rich. In the old system, the state may have ordered the (state owned) pen manufacturer to make a top-quality pen. The manufacturer would have done its best to comply, but ultimately, would have made a product that nobody wanted. In the new system, the administration at the pen factory can look at the data on what sells, and produce that to provide maximum profit to the company and maximum utility to consumers within the constraints of the factory's capabilities -- in this case, that means cheap, crappy pens. Importantly, these pens sell well, turn a profit for the factory, and provide the income needed to feed, cloth, and house all of its workers.
Re: Why can't China make a good ballpoint pen?
#4It's not that they couldn't if they wanted to; they could. But the history of domestic demand has been for cheap pens --the BICs/Papermates of the world. Their history of consumer products has been very utilitarian from pens to the mao jackets and the "iron furnace in every yard"[1] program to bootstrap industrialization onto a country where it arrived late.
So, the opportunity arrived where they had plenty of available labor and mature foreign economies which were diverging away from labor intensive low value added industries and in need of cheaper labor elsewhere and China availed itself in order to grow away from subsistence farming.
So, in that context the rise of the ubiquitous plastic pen is no surprise. No reason to deride it (and all it represents, from Christmas kitsch to joss money); it's what's got them to where they are and allows them to raise the question.
Now, it seems, they too are nearing an inflection point where more value added industries, industries which manufacture more value added products are needed in order to grow the internal consumer market and economy. The new consumerists, as it were.
I think the officials very well know this but felt the need to embarrass the industries which got them to the position where they can ask this question.
But Kai just avoids this angle and instead focuses on the "gotcha" sensationalism the PRC officials lobbed the media.
Re: Why can't China make a good ballpoint pen?
#5I buy my pens from Muji, they are made in China and Thailand, mainly, and they tend to be very good quality (Muji charges at least 8 kuai for a pen, often 20 or 30 kuai). It is simply a matter of you get what you pay for (i.e. 便宜没好货，好货不便宜).
Re: Why can't China make a good ballpoint pen?
#6Maybe it's just as well. Ballpoint pens are terrible.
How The Ballpoint Pen Killed Cursive: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/ballpo...
Discussed earlier this year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10141874
Re: Why can't China make a good ballpoint pen?
#7Ballpoint pens and erasers in the USA also felt rough to me, a Japanese. I don't know about the other 2 countries mentioned in the article (Germany and Switzerland), but maybe its the countries culture? Previously posted story of Hagoromo chalk is another example of Japanese high quality stationery .
Re: Why can't China make a good ballpoint pen?
#8I think the key point that he's missing is that the chinese manufacturers are now manufacturing to the market's demand, and this is why China is growing rich. In the old system, the state may have ordered the (state owned) pen manufacturer to make a top-quality pen. The manufacturer would have done its best to comply, but ultimately, would have made a product that nobody wanted. In the new system, the administration…
The freemarket is at it again.
Re: Why can't China make a good ballpoint pen?
#9Ballpoint pens and erasers in the USA also felt rough to me, a Japanese. I don't know about the other 2 countries mentioned in the article (Germany and Switzerland), but maybe its the countries culture? Previously posted story of Hagoromo chalk is another example of Japanese high quality stationery .
My favourite mechanical pencil is the Pentel Side FX, which is apparently Japanese as well.
Re: Why can't China make a good ballpoint pen?
#10Maybe it's just as well. Ballpoint pens are terrible. How The Ballpoint Pen Killed Cursive: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/ballpo... Discussed earlier this year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10141874
As a lefty, cursive can stay dead.