In Search Of The Perfect Chinese Pen

Yesterday, my baby momma told me that I should make a list of every different kind of item I've ever collected. This meta-list is probably fairly large; at one point or another in my life, I've collected everything from WWII-era German pistols to partially-Latina mistresses. But my first love was probably pens. I was collecting pens before I was ten years old, to the point that my father had to step in and put a stop to things before, presumably, I disappeared under a mountain of rare-color Paper-Mate disposables.

Three decades later, I have a reasonable collection of Pelikans, Kawecos, Lamys, Pilots, and Montblancs. What I don't have is a Chinese pen. It never occurred to me that you could get a decent pen from China. Turns out that it never really occurred to the Chinese, either --- until someone important asked.

A TTAC reader recommended this post on China's struggle to make a good ballpoint pen. For the tl;dr crowd, it comes down to the fact that the machine required to make the "ball" itself has only been perfected by the Swiss. But the article goes into greater and more universal depth. Here's the money shot:

The question of quantity over quality came up during the CCTV program devoted to ballpoint pens. The host asked the three Chinese CEOs onstage a simple question: “Take three seconds and think of an innovative product that is uniquely Chinese.” . First up was Qu Daokui, CEO of a robotics company. “If I close my eyes and try to think of a product that has Chinese characteristics and is recognized internationally,” stammered Qu, “I can’t think of one.” . Next, it was the machine tool CEO’s turn. “There are two things that only Chinese people can make,” explained Guan Xiyou, CEO of Shenyang Machine Tool Group, “The first is fireworks. The second? Folding fans. Foreigners still can’t make a good folding fan.” . Qiu Zhiming, the CEO of the ballpoint pen company, was no longer in the hot seat. He sat quietly, watching the CEOs onstage stammer answers to this essential question. . And he smiled.

If you've been reading this website for a while you'll notice that I have a bit of an issue with the manufacturing race to the bottom and the idea of Chinese manufacturing hegemony. There are two reasons for this. The first is that I like America and I want to see people have jobs and careers and food on the table and stable families and all the other good things that come from the presence of manufacturing employment.

The second is that I don't think Chinese industrialization, as it's being practiced, is particularly good for China. People are being frog-marched at gunpoint from their rural communities to slave their lives away in factories that don't adhere to reasonable environmental or safety standards. Employees are brutalized and humiliated to the point that they attempt suicide.

English-language apologists for China-centric policies --- and there are many of them --- point out that many of the same conditions applied in the United States a hundred years ago. But to excuse Chinese labor exploitation on the basis that the Western world once committed similar sins against its citizens is, essentially, to assert that human beings have no ability to learn from history or the mistakes of others. The Chinese know perfectly well what safe, tolerable workplaces look like. They simply don't care to create them, because to do so would be to reduce the windfall of profits.

As I sit at my desk, I can console myself that everything I'm wearing but my underwear was made in the United States. (The underwear is from the Dominican Republic. I should buy decent underwear. But in my current state of life, almost nobody sees it except for the occasional emergency-room nurse.) I know that the vast majority of the products I buy support safe working conditions for my neighbors and countrymen. It's not always possible to make an American (or even a European) choice. But it's possible more often than you'd think, and it's possible more often than the apologists would have you believe. Plus, that way you get a decent ballpoint pen.