| 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. |
英國《每日電訊報》消息，由于勞動力成本上升及棉花短缺，中國雄踞牛仔褲王國的日子將屈指可數。 |
| 24-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. |
24歲的魏小楓（音）創辦的公司，曾經為眾多英國的服裝店提供了極其廉價的時尚單品，比如不到100元的牛仔褲、30元的T恤，這也讓Zara、H&M以及Topshop這類品牌變成全球巨頭。但是魏女士的公司已經深陷危機，現在已經停止接受西方國家的訂單。 |
| "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." |
她說：“跟其它公司一樣，我們現在還是會收到海外的訂單，但是沒有人會去生產這些訂單，外國人不想付合理的價錢，這樣下來我們就會虧本。我們已經兩年沒掙到什么錢了。” |
| 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. |
現在，中國工廠普遍經營困難。過去，工人們一個月掙300元就已經很開心了，現在他們要求的月薪已經漲到了3000到4500元。同時，棉花的價格已經攀升到30年來的最高點。巴基斯坦和澳大利亞的洪水，印度的棉花出口禁令以及中東的革命浪潮都讓棉花價格高到離譜。
（China.org.cn）
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