There are lot of unbranded pens in the market that stop working even before the ink inside them are used up. On the other hand, Bic has better pens because they cannot afford to disappoint customers.
China faces a branding problem, but most markets are saturated and cannot accommodate another brand.
After the reconstruction of WWII Japan too had a branding issue. Before wwi the US had a branding issue. We all have to start somewhere and work our ways up.
I believe the PRC spokesperson just wanted to embarrass industry in general to get them to think about improvement and innovation --which is good and well, but I don't think its couth to bite the hand that fed you. It seemed a bit ungrateful.
Would that be the middle income trap? With a median age that's close to Japan's in the 90s, it's a worry.
So, the opportunity arrived where they had plenty of available labor and mature foreign economies which were diverging away from labor intensive low value added industries and in need of cheaper labor elsewhere and China availed itself in order to grow away from subsistence farming.
So, in that context the rise of the ubiquitous plastic pen is no surprise. No reason to deride it (and all it represents, from Christmas kitsch to joss money); it's what's got them to where they are and allows them to raise the question.
Now, it seems, they too are nearing an inflection point where more value added industries, industries which manufacture more value added products are needed in order to grow the internal consumer market and economy. The new consumerists, as it were.
I think the officials very well know this but felt the need to embarrass the industries which got them to the position where they can ask this question.
But Kai just avoids this angle and instead focuses on the "gotcha" sensationalism the PRC officials lobbed the media.
[1]http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/greatleap.htm