![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.paperstone.co.uk\/News\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/coloured-biros-600x486.jpg\")
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China has finally triumphed after a long, elusive quest to produce a ballpoint pen under its own steam.<\/p>\n
The rapidly developing nation has spent years trying to master the complex technology of manufacturing delicate ballpoint tips.<\/p>\n
But despite making 80% of the world\u2019s ballpoint pens \u2013 a staggering 38 billion per year \u2013 it didn\u2019t have machines with enough precision to make the vital ball bearing components.<\/p>\n
And although China is the world\u2019s largest steel producer, it didn\u2019t have the high-quality steel needed to case the ink-dispensing ball.<\/p>\n
So the balls were imported from Switzerland, and the top-quality steel from Germany and Japan.<\/p>\n
This long-running failure to produce a completely home-grown ballpoint (a stationary stationery crisis?) had become an issue of national pride.<\/p>\n
Even the Chinese premier Li Keqiang had complained on TV about the \u201crough\u201d domestically-produced pens.<\/p>\n
His remarks prompted the Hong Kong Economic Journal to comment, “The day China can produce a 100% homemade ball pen will be the day it truly qualifies as a first-class industrial power.”<\/p>\n
So the revelation in January 2017 that the state-owned Taiyuan Iron & Steel firm had finally solved the problem was highly symbolic for the Chinese and a hot topic on its social media.<\/p>\n
The breakthrough is bad news for Japan, Germany and Switzerland though \u2013 China plans to make all of its own pen tips within a couple of years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China has finally triumphed after a long, elusive quest to produce a ballpoint pen under its own steam. The rapidly developing nation has spent years trying to master the complex technology of manufacturing delicate ballpoint tips. But despite making 80% of the world\u2019s ballpoint pens \u2013 a staggering 38 billion per year \u2013 it didn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Pens_and_Pencils"],"yoast_head":"\n