China manufactures a ballpoint pen all by itself (2017) (opens in new tab)

No. That’s why no-one bothered to do anything about it for so long.

Considering they manufactured "38 billion ballpoint pens a year" that isn't much no. They probably made all of the costs of buying it from suppliers back in sales margins.

This is more symbolic of their manufacturing and design prowess which historically has been limited to: everyone else does the design, we just build it.

Also from BBC then: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38566114

I didn't realize that when posted it. :( If anyone could help amend the title with the year...

Muji pens are amazing in case you're looking for a recommendation. They're pretty cheap, but feel great to write with, and I've never had one give up on me prematurely. Its terrific for people like me who easily lose pens.

It's almost like the political thoughs of a leader of most other countries aside from America, are complex and can't really be effectively summed up in a short article about the manufacturing of a ballpoint pen.

Also, by 'they' do you mean all of China or just Xi?

They're simple enough.

Churning them out by the millions with sufficiently narrow tolerances to "just work" and doing so at an attractive price point requires a very finely tuned manufacturing operation and that kind of thing doesn't happen overnight.

If some despot had all the ball point pen production people rounded up and shot it would take us while before we figured out how to make ball point pens in the same volume at the same price again because there's a lot of tribal knowledge that goes into this sort of thing. This is basically the position China is in because they want to make ball point pens but they don't have any ball point pen people.

It's not a specific pen. Any pen made with steel balls made by TISCO would qualify. They don't seem to publish statistics. I found a document purporting to answer questions by investors [1], where their answer to questions like "did the media attention lead to increased order volume?" or "how large are the cost savings?" is basically "thank you for your interest, our proposed standard has already passed national review" without giving specifics. Those investors probably weren't satisfied with the response.

[1] http://tgbx.tisco.com.cn/upload/news/2017031406023863.doc

And once you subscribe, you can't unsubscribe except by phone.

With major world leaders regularly decrying the Free press these days it doesn't seem so needless or hyperbolic.