s off each month, for pay below the legal minimum of 12 cents an hour. Poor safety conditions in China's apparel factories have also resulted in dozens of employee deaths ("Levi's, p. 104).
The interpretation that can be drawn from the way that the case presented these facts is that sometime in 1993, Levis first became aware of this. However, human rights had been a big news story in China since 1989, when the Tianmen Square incident occurred. This gives us a four-year gap between an incident that shocked the world (and, we can assume, even some MNCs that had established a beachhead in China) and the time that Levis announced its withdrawal from China.
In spite of the setback from its bloody crackdown on protesters in Beijing's Tianmen Square in June, 1989, and its recent economic growth China has arrived as an economic power in Asia. At current growth rates, China is projected to be one of, if not, the biggest economy in the world. One pragmatic reason for China's growth is its low wage rates, which makes it extremely attractive to manufacturers looking to control their costs (Chapter 1, p. 22).
If we are to follow the logic of the case, no one at Levis was aware of the costing and pricing situation in China. Any non-accountant with a calculator would have been able to determine, simply on labor costs alone, that a pair of Levis made in China had considerably lower labor costs (12 cents an hour) than anywhere else in
...