中国廉价牛仔裤将消失

杭州泰弗尔英语

The end of China's cheap denim dream
中国廉价牛仔裤将消失

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Rising labor costs and a shortage of cotton means that China's days at the head of a denim empire could soon be numbered, the Daily Telegraph reports.
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英国《每日电讯报》消息，由于劳动力成本上升及棉花短缺，中国雄踞牛仔裤王国的日子将屈指可数。

3 P& k" o& m% j8 b4 [7 ~7 A- w24-year-old Wei Xiaofeng's company has helped British clothing stores to offer cheaper and cheaper fashion -- jeans that cost less than 100 yuan or T-shirts for 30 yuan -- and turned the likes of Zara, H&M and Topshop into global giants. But now Wei's company is in crisis and has stopped taking orders from the West.
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8 ~" {/ m- O7 p$ S' P% O. v- K 24岁的魏小枫（音）创办的公司，曾经为众多英国的服装店提供了极其廉价的时尚单品，比如不到100元的牛仔裤、30元的T恤，这也让Zara、H&M以及Topshop这类品牌变成全球巨头。但是魏女士的公司已经深陷危机，现在已经停止接受西方国家的订单。
"We are still getting orders from abroad - all the factories are," she said. "But no one is taking them because we would make a loss. The foreigners do not want to pay a reasonable price. We have not made any profits for two years."
  ~  p# R/ Q4 @9 O她说：“跟其它公司一样，我们现在还是会收到海外的订单，但是没有人会去生产这些订单，外国人不想付合理的价钱，这样下来我们就会亏本。我们已经两年没挣到什么钱了。”
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Now, the Chinese factories have hit a wall. The workers who were once happy to work for as little as 300 yuan a month now want 10 to 15 times that sum. Meanwhile, the price of cotton has skyrocketed to levels not seen for 30 years. Floods in Pakistan and Australia, an export ban from India and now the wave of revolutions across the Middle East has made cotton unaffordable.

现在，中国工厂普遍经营困难。过去，工人们一个月挣300元就已经很开心了，现在他们要求的月薪已经涨到了3000到4500元。同时，棉花的价格已经攀升到30年来的最高点。巴基斯坦和澳大利亚的洪水，印度的棉花出口禁令以及中东的革命浪潮都让棉花价格高到离谱。