李维斯牛仔裤也曾对中国说不

【英文原文】

Levi's Faced Earlier China Challenge
Google Inc.'s challenge to Beijing is not a first: Levi Strauss & Co. 17 years ago walked away from China.

Today, Levi's brand jeans are produced in China, and in Beijing last November the company opened its 501st store in the country.

What happened in between?

In 1993, the iconic San Francisco maker of dungarees declared it would end relationships with contractors in China because of what it called that country's 'pervasive violation of human rights.'

At the time, multinational corporations were pouring into developing countries, looking for cheap labor. Not far behind were human-rights activists, confident that Western companies were a vehicle for social change: Campus demonstrations demanding big U.S. companies sever ties to South Africa had just helped dismantle that nation's apartheid policies.

Two decades ago, as now, China was attractive for its fast growth, cheap work force and huge population. But in China, activists had leverage: disgust at the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Not many foreign companies were making money in China in those days and fewer still were ready to shout down activists armed with evidence of dangerous working conditions, prison labor and other Chinese workplace-rights abuses.

Family-controlled Levi's had branded itself a company with a conscience. Robert Haas, its chairman and chief executive then, ordered a review of human rights in 40 countries, which determined that only China and Myanmar had rights violations so troublesome that pulling out made the most sense.

'They were at the forefront of all the compliance issues,' said an American executive in the textile sourcing business who at the time worked with Li & Fung Ltd., a Hong Kong trading firm.

Everyone in the industry was aware, he said, that the U.S. company's strategies helped make it 'a big deal' in the rag trade to consider a factory's lighting, ventilation, toilets and cafeteria on par with prices and production quality.

Parallels between Levi's and Google are strong. Each is defending a brand steeped in American values. Also, Levi's was small in China, sourcing only $50 million of trousers and shirts, while Google is the runner up in Internet searches after Baidu Inc. Each of the U.S. companies was plugging China into pre-existing global networks -- Levi's with its supply chain and Google via the World Wide Web. Their actions sparked political storms.

'If you look at the Levi Strauss and Google situations it's important to see there are similarities but there are differences,' said Sharon Hom, a spokeswoman for the group Human Rights In China. 'Not everyone needs a pair of jeans but everyone needs information.'

Mr. Haas, who led Levi's pullback from China, defended the company's human-rights positions. In a speech quoted in the book 'Levi's Children: Coming to Terms with Human Rights in the Global Marketplace,' Mr. Hass said 'decisions which emphasize cost to the exclusion of all other factors don't serve the company and its shareholders' long term interests.'

China's foreign ministry's reaction to Levi's move, the book stated, was to argue human rights had nothing to do with it.

How much difference Levi's stand made to factory conditions in China is hard to quantify; the company itself was comfortable enough to return in 2008.

'Conditions in many multinational-affiliated factories have improved because the focus has been put on them,' said Geoffrey Crothall, editor of China Labor Bulletin in Hong Kong. 'But conditions in Chinese factories as a whole haven't.'

Karl Schoenberger, author of 'Levi's Children,' argued in his book that Levi's took a bold stand in China, but came to regret its decision almost immediately and so never fully severed ties.