Since Bic, a French company was able to mass produce ball point pens, ship them across the Atlantic and retail them for 19 cents in the USA more than 50 years ago your theory about the Chinese does not apply.
BTW, I used a fountain pen in elementary school. It was a Waterman…the bladder needed filling at least once per day. You never knew when it would run out and we had bottles of Schaeffer ink in the wells on our desks…circa 1963