'all devices are manufactured and sold by Pine Microsystems Inc. based in Fremont, California. Its founder is TL Lim, the inventor of the PopBox and Popcorn Hour series of media players sold under the Syabas and Cloud Media brands'
https://www.pine64.org/2020/01/15/pinephones-start-shipping-... - it's about phones, but I believe laptops are produced there too.
What? They state they do not make a profit from the sale of these devices on their storefront when you're ordering one, and are probably doing so at a loss to promote the ideology behind open source hardware/software.
But, your claim is mere speculation until you definitively can prove otherwise, and it seems that the phone is the device limited to HK production: not China. And, yes, there is a difference.
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=8956&page=4
Update: From what I have been able to gather is that the single board computer itself is made in China, the assembly of the finished products like the Pinebook laptop are in CA. The phone, however, may likely be made in the mainland if I read that correctly (its late), which while slightly disappointing is not really a surprise. They're in HK awaiting shipping to Pine US.
https://www.pine64.org/2020/02/15/february-update-post-cny-a...
I found the confirmation I was looking for; 'gear' was an ambigious term that related to the internal components to these devices, I had read in previous posts that these were made in Fremont as well as the wiki.
However, after another screening of the update it seems that the Pinebook pro is in fact made on the Mainland as its been the cause for the delay in new pre-orders.