Hone in definition: to focus one’s attention more narrowly or precisely on a particular task, issue, etc.
The usage note there says that “the expression hone in is in fact a corruption of home in.”
I’ve never been accused of being a “careful writer or speaker” 
This. It’s considered correct now because people have been using it incorrectly for so long.
Soapstone isn’t a rare rock. It’s fairly common globally, and definitely occurs in China.
Some of the figurines are probably roughed out on copy lathes or simlar machines where a bunch of blanks are clamped in place and an operator runs a tool across the surface of a template and it shapes all of the blanks at once, very quickly.
Hell, that can be said about a decent chunk of all modern English.
A decent portion of IMHO & MPSIMS threads are bitching about exactly this phenomenon.
IOW: We have met our fellow English speakers and collectively they are idjits.