The Problem With China's Economy is Poor Balls...

Generali

...kinda.

China makes 38,000,000,000 ball point pens each year but makes 0 balls to put at the end of the point.

The reason? It can't make good enough balls to put on the end of the pens.

The reason? It isn't worth spending on R&D because every other company will steal your ideas and there's nothing you can do about it.

http://www.ejinsight.com/20160121-what-ball-pen-tells-us-about-china-s-manufacturing-weakness/

kabayiri

A UK company, SME, used to make some of the finest tolerance bearings in the world. I think they still do.

Pointless to make these for a cheap biro, when they can be sold as part of a hifi tonearm for thousands of pounds each though.

China need not worry. In a few years they will be able to buy the ballpoint makers in Germany, Switzerland etc.

cells

pens are so cheap these days you can buy 10 for a quid and thats the retail price not the manufacturing sale price

So what does the ball on the tip cost the manufacturers?

I would guess no more than a penny for 100

38 billion pens thus equals something in the order of $3.8 million to buy said balls. If the profit margin is 20% its only a sub $1 million lost to china


If it costs more than that $1m to build the buildings and machines to make them then why do that and not continue importing said balls

The two big manufactured products are cars and processed foods. Both of which china is getting good at and gearing up production. $1m a year for small steel balls doesnt seem that big a deal.

Nikkster

I thought this was going to be about Ed!

Generali

cells wrote: »

pens are so cheap these days you can buy 10 for a quid and thats the retail price not the manufacturing sale price

So what does the ball on the tip cost the manufacturers?

I would guess no more than a penny for 100

38 billion pens thus equals something in the order of $3.8 million to buy said balls. If the profit margin is 20% its only a sub $1 million lost to china


If it costs more than that $1m to build the buildings and machines to make them then why do that and not continue importing said balls

The two big manufactured products are cars and processed foods. Both of which china is getting good at and gearing up production. $1m a year for small steel balls doesnt seem that big a deal.

That's an impressive effort at missing the (ball)point!

The point is that in China, R&D spending just isn't worthwhile as theft is rife and you can't sue with any reliable chance of success. Given that so much of the modern economy is R&D based, how can China hope to move forward if R&D is effectively off limits?

cells

Generali wrote: »

That's an impressive effort at missing the (ball)point!

The point is that in China, R&D spending just isn't worthwhile as theft is rife and you can't sue with any reliable chance of success. Given that so much of the modern economy is R&D based, how can China hope to move forward if R&D is effectively off limits?

but is it or is that what the internet thinks?

I am not sure importing the balls on ballpoint pens is proof of weak IP rights. It is more indicative in that case of it being not worthwhile to not import a part of a product that costs nowt.

Also IP is temporary and ballpoint pens are probably well out of patent now. So why do the Chinese need to R&D it when they can google the patents on how to make them and the machines that make them. As I was suggesting its probably not worthwhile to make as its so dam cheap to buy

patman99

I used to work in QC for a major multi-national company and can actually state that the Chinese are simply not capable of high grade precision engineering. Nearly every component we had from Chinese suppliers had to undergo full testing before it could be used in production.

At another firm, I worked as a CNC setter/operator and we purchased a new Chinese-built press-brake purely on the strength of the glowing review of one from a company on the same industrial estate as us.

It turned out to be hugely unreliable and to top it off, we found out that the company who had given us a glowing praise of the press-brake had done so on the manufacturers promise that if they managed to get us to buy one, they would get an extra 12 months full on-site 24 hour parts+labour repair service extension.