A lot of the manufacturing ability that we take for granted is uncommon in much ...

tablespoon · on Oct 20, 2022

> China was not able to manufacture ball point pen tips before 2017.

IIRC, the issue wasn't so much that the couldn't make them, but the ones that they could make were clearly inferior.

According to this, it seems like the problem was more one of metallurgy: https://fortune.com/2017/01/10/china-ballpoint-pens-steel-ja...