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Sincho

Junior Member
Registered Member
Chish said:
The BCI (Better Cotton Initiative organisation) is being used by the US to accused China of using slaved labour in the cotton industry in Western China. So some members started to boycott cotton from China such as Adidas, H&M, Niki etc. Chinese comsumers retaliated and members are at odds with each others on how to deal with China. It's a mess and Levis want out.
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That Levis wants out could be because of bad memory from a prior experience. It pulled out from manufacturing in China in 1993. It must have suffered a great loss of worldwide market share due to its uncompetitive prices after that . It rejoined manufacturing in China in 2008. The following WSJ article is from 2010.


Wall Street Journal: Levi's Faced Earlier Challenge in China
14 January 2010


Jeans Company Walked Out 17 Years Ago, But Today Has 501 Stores

By JAMES T. AREDDY

SHANGHAI—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. Few foreign companies were making money in China in those days and fewer still were ready to shout down activists wielding evidence of dangerous working conditions, prison labor and other workplace abuses.

Family-controlled Levi's had branded itself a company with a conscience. Robert Haas, its chairman and chief executive at the time, 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 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, buying only $50 million of trousers and shirts, while Google is the runner up in Internet searches in China 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.

In the spring of 1993, Levi's announcement hit a Washington embroiled in its annual debate on the renewal of Most Favored Nation trading status, a wrenching review that linked Beijing's record on human rights to U.S. tariff policies. President Bill Clinton, who campaigned talking of the "Butchers of Beijing," found himself playing down human rights to promote China's trading status.

"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. "The impact is much bigger today because it is making it into a public debate 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. Haas 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 reaction to Levi's move, the book stated, was to argue human rights had nothing to do with it. A foreign ministry spokesman boasted, "There are tens of thousands of foreign companies in China."

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 Labour Bulletin in Hong Kong. "But conditions in Chinese factories as a whole haven't."

From the beginning, Levi's said it hoped one day to return to China. When it announced plans to do so five years after its pullout, it drew fierce criticism from the human-rights community. "At no time did we believe or did we intend to influence the human-rights practices across China," a Levi's spokesman said at the time. "All we can do is try to improve the conditions in factories that work on our behalf."

Today, the Levi's name appears across urban China. On Shanghai's main shopping street, Levi's shops stand blocks from each other and dozens of flags with the company name flutter from the avenue's lampposts. Levi's advertises on televisions in the city's taxis and has its name plastered onto the sides of city buse
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Gatekeeper

Gatekeeper

Brigadier
Registered Member
Strangelove said:
I kinda feel sorry for Biden, the dude's so senile that he doesn't know what the fuck is going on and is merely parroting what his staff hands him.

Then again it's all good, I hope those Wanwanese in Taipei are paying close attention.
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Yes indeed. Let's hope all those Taiwanese, and recently members here arguing that U.S. will send in their troops to fight for Taiwan.

The lesson here, and in Vietnam and other places is that U.S. will only fight for its self interest. Anything other than that, and you are left out to hang high and dry.
 
A

Abominable

Major
Registered Member
Sincho said:
That Levis wants out could be because of bad memory from a prior experience. It pulled out from manufacturing in China in 1993. It must have suffered a great loss of worldwide market share due to its uncompetitive prices after that . It rejoined manufacturing in China in 2008. The following WSJ article is from 2010.
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Who wears Levis anymore? No one in the western world under 40. I'm actually surprised they still exist.

I'm even more surprised they exist in China. Do Chinese people want to pull off the 80s cowboy look?
 
AssassinsMace

AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
That's a bunch of bull that US companies have a conscience. They're in other countries to exploit cheap labor first so they can make more money for themselves where if they were manufacturing in their own countries that money would be going to pay workers. US social media companies are under fire in the so-called free and open countries for their negative social effects on those countries. What politicians and citizens complain about them today wasn't exactly what they wanted to do to China? Somehow what negative affects that people in the US are complaining about today wasn't going to be bad in China if they had their way?
 
A

Agnus

Junior Member
Registered Member
I don't blame Afghan troops for not fighting back much at all. They were trained to fight like Americans with American heavy airpower behind their back. It is not shocking that they aren't able to fight back without airpower which is how they were trained to fight. The fighting ability of American troops would be no different if they had no American airpower behind them.
 
A

Abominable

Major
Registered Member
Temstar said:
Temstar said:
Looks like the deal is now done, the government has agreed to a peaceful transition of power:
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1426829126313328640
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Well that was an anti-climax.

Part of me thinks this was the Afghans plan all along. a 20 year graft to extract as much money from NATO as possible. As soon as they stepped away things go back to as they've been for thousands of years.

GG, Taliban. Another L for the Anglos.

One thing that annoys me is that even though they lost, we'll never see the Anglo perpetrators of war crimes punished. When the Nazis were defeated we had the Nuremburg trials. No American will see the inside of the ICC for the countless war crimes perpetrated against the Afghan people.

Never mind the war crimes, I doubt any politicians or generals will even be punished for their incompetency.
 
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