In the summer of 2019, an executive at Patagonia got a phone call from a trusted auditor working in China. A planned trip to visit some cotton farms in the region of Xinjiang wasn’t going to happen. Soon other barriers were thrown up. Information from suppliers in the region ran dry.

2019年夏天，巴塔哥尼亚的一位高管接到了一通电话，是一家在中国工作、有良好信誉的审计机构打来的。前往新疆地区一些棉花农场的旅行计划被取消了。很快，其他障碍也出现了。来自该地区供应商的信息开始越来越少。

“We saw this escalation of secrecy,” said Matt Dwyer, the Patagonia executive who oversees the privately held outdoor apparel maker’s supply chains. He spent a year trying to figure out what was going on as media reports detailed widespread repression and forced labor of Uyghur people in Xinjiang.

户外服装制造商巴塔哥尼亚是一家私有企业，该公司高管、负责监督供应链的马特·德怀尔说：“我们遇到了一种保密升级。”媒体报道详细描述了新疆维吾尔人受到的广泛镇压和强迫劳动，他花了一年的时间试图弄清楚发生了什么。

“When you peel the onion, it starts to reek pretty quick,” Mr. Dwyer said. By July 2020, Patagonia had decided to break the two-decades-long ties with its Chinese partners and build relationships with new cotton farmers, ginneries and spinners in other countries.

“当你剥开洋葱时，很快就会散发出刺鼻的味道，”德怀尔说。到2020年7月，巴塔哥尼亚决定结束与中国合作伙伴长达20年的关系，并开始经营与其他国家的新棉农、轧棉厂和纺纱厂的关系。

China’s repression of the Uyghur people is in the spotlight this week after hacked police documents detailed systemic abuse in Xinjiang. Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, is also visiting the region on a trip that faces severe limitations. Her movements have been confined to what Chinese officials describe as a “closed-loop bubble” to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 virus, dashing any hope of an assessment of the repression of the Uyghurs and prompting the United States to call it a mistake.

在详细记录新疆系统性虐待行为的警方文件遭黑客窃取曝光后，中国对维吾尔人的镇压本周成为关注焦点。联合国人权事务高级专员米歇尔·巴切莱特也正在访问该地区，行程面临严重限制。她的行动被限制在中国官员所说的防止新冠病毒传播的“闭环泡泡”内，使评估维吾尔人受迫害状况的希望完全破灭，美国也因此称这次访问是个错误。

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, told Ms. Bachelet this week that his country didn’t need “patronizing lectures” about human rights issues, according to Chinese state media.

据中国官方媒体报道，中国领导人习近平本周告诉巴切莱特，在人权问题上，他的国家不需要对别国颐指气使的“教师爷”。

The lack of access in Xinjiang has also made it pretty much impossible for global clothing brands like Patagonia to figure out if their Chinese suppliers use forced labor.

不能进入新疆也使得像巴塔哥尼亚这样的全球服装品牌几乎无法查清他们的中国供应商是否使用了强迫劳动。

At best, their auditing firms have been offered factory visits by video. At worst, local monitoring staff members are harassed and their offices raided and shut down by the Chinese police.

他们的审计公司最多只能通过视频参观工厂。在最坏的情况下，当地监察人员受到骚扰，他们的办公室被中国警方搜查和关闭。

Cotton from Xinjiang is widely used in the global garment industry. As of last fall, 16 percent of cotton clothes on store shelves in the United States had fiber from Xinjiang, according to a survey by Oritain, a company that does forensic testing to determine the origin of raw materials. But regulation soon to go into effect in the United States will allow customs officers to seize shipments of any goods that are made in Xinjiang unless companies can prove their supply chains are not tainted with forced labor.

全球服装行业广泛使用新疆的棉花。根据Oritain——该公司进行司法科学检测以确定原材料来源——的一项调查，截至去年秋天，美国商店货架上16%的棉质衣服含有来自新疆的纤维。但即将在美国生效的法规将允许海关官员扣押任何在新疆制造的货物，除非公司能够证明其供应链没有涉及强迫劳动。

The new rule, called the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, and the inability of companies to determine what is happening in their supply chains are unraveling decades of the clothing industry’s expansion in China.

被称为《维吾尔强迫劳动预防法》的新规定，再加上各个公司无法确定其供应链中发生的情况，正在破坏服装行业数十年来在中国的扩张。

“That era is drawing to a close because of the gravity of the forced-labor crisis and the broader human-rights crisis in the Uyghur region,” said Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, a steering committee member of the Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region. “The increasing authoritarianism of the Chinese government across the board is creating a situation where business as usual isn’t feasible anymore.”

“由于强迫劳动危机的严重性和维吾尔地区更广泛的人权危机，那个时代即将结束，”工人权利联盟执行董事斯科特·诺瓦说，他是领导“结束维吾尔地区强迫劳动联盟”委员会的成员。“中国政府全面加强威权主义，正在使日常事务变得越来越不可行。”

Calculating whether to leave Xinjiang is complicated for international brands. The reputational risk and legal costs from the West that they could incur by staying are huge, yet brands face large commercial losses in China if they leave. There is also the challenge of finding new partners, when the costs of both cotton and shipping have soared and competition has increased.

对于国际品牌来说，评估离开新疆的利弊是一件复杂的事情。留下来可能会招致来自西方的巨大的声誉风险和法律成本，但如果品牌离开，它们在中国将面临巨大的商业损失。当棉花和运输成本都在飙升且竞争加剧时，寻找新合作伙伴也面临挑战。

Speaking out about Xinjiang can unleash fury from nationalistic Chinese consumers, like calls for boycotts and accusations of companies being complicit with Western governments in trying to keep China down. That anger has translated into lost sales totaling hundreds of millions of dollars for companies like H&M and Nike.

为新疆问题发声会激怒民族主义的中国消费者，导致他们呼吁抵制和指责该公司与西方政府串通一气试图压制中国。对于H&M和耐克等公司，这种愤怒已经转化为总计数亿美元的销售额损失。

Brands are typically keen to showcase actions they have taken against forced labor, but when it comes to Xinjiang many simply avoid the subject altogether. Some fear that speaking out might imperil their other China operations and provoke officials to delay shipments of their goods. Mr. Nova at the Worker Rights Consortium said some brands had given him informal commitments to leave China but on the condition that the information remain private.

品牌通常热衷于展示他们针对强迫劳动采取的行动，但谈到新疆，许多品牌完全避开了这个话题。一些人担心，发声可能会危及他们在中国的其他业务，并促使官员推迟他们的货物运出。工人权利联盟的诺瓦说，一些品牌已经向他做出了离开中国的非正式承诺，但条件是对此信息保密。

Prominent fashion brands like Reformation have spoken out in the past about labor issues but declined a request for comment for this article.

过去，Reformation等知名时尚品牌曾就劳工问题发表过言论，但拒绝就本文发表评论。

Patagonia’s willingness to share its experience in moving its cotton supply chain out of China stems in part from a corporate identity rooted in activism. And its executives have decided that their relatively small presence in China is worth risking.

巴塔哥尼亚愿意分享将其棉花供应链移出中国的经验，部分原因在于其企业形象植根于活动主义。它的高管们已经判定，他们在中国的规模相对较小，值得冒这个险。

“We were faced with a moral decision that was in direct conflict with a business decision,” Mr. Dwyer said. After unsuccessfully contacting its Chinese suppliers, farmers and spinners to try to get more information about reports in 2019 of forced labor in Xinjiang, Patagonia hired research firms to look into the accounting and financial documents of its partners. It was soon clear that getting details would be very difficult.

“我们面临一个与商业决策直接冲突的道德决策，”德怀尔说。为了获得有关2019年新疆强迫劳动报告的更多信息，巴塔哥尼亚联系了其中国供应商、农民和纺纱厂未果，此后，它聘请研究公司调查其合作伙伴的会计和财务文件。公司很快发现，获取详细信息将非常困难。

“When it came down to it, yes, we believe these things are happening,” Mr. Dwyer said. “We didn’t believe staying there for the sake of our revenue was worth it.”

“归根结底，是的，我们相信这些事情正在发生，”德怀尔说。“我们认为为了赚钱而留在那里是不值得的。”

Patagonia developed partnerships in Xinjiang two decades ago after deciding in the mid-1990s to use organic cotton. When it cut its ties with Chinese suppliers in 2020, Patagonia had to phase out some products that had been available for more than a decade because the fabric couldn’t be easily replicated.

在1990年代中期决定使用有机棉后，巴塔哥尼亚于20年前在新疆建立了合作伙伴关系。在2020年与中国供应商断绝关系时，巴塔哥尼亚不得不逐步淘汰一些已经上市十多年的产品，因为这些产品的面料难以复制。

Patagonia has now turned to cotton farmers in Peru, but many are still transitioning to growing organic cotton. As a result, Patagonia has had to change product labels to note they are made with “cotton-in-conversion.”

巴塔哥尼亚现在已经转向秘鲁的棉农，但许多人仍处于种植有机棉的过渡阶段。因此，巴塔哥尼亚不得不更改产品标签，注明它们是用“转换棉”(cotton-in-conversion)制成的。

Around the time that Patagonia was asking questions about Chinese suppliers, Eileen Fisher, another privately held clothing brand, began to take a look at its own operations in China, which are mostly related to silk production. The company was one of dozens that pledged a decade ago to eliminate Uzbek cotton from their supply chains. That experience gave it “training wheels” to deal with Xinjiang, said Inka Apter, a designer for fabric research and development at Eileen Fisher.

大约在巴塔哥尼亚向中国供应商提出问题的时候，另一个私营服装品牌Eileen Fisher开始审视自己在中国的业务，这些业务主要与丝绸制造有关。该公司是十年前承诺从供应链中排除乌兹别克斯坦棉花的数十家公司之一。Eileen Fisher面料研发设计师印加·阿普特表示，这种经历为其应对新疆提供了“辅助轮”。

Ms. Apter said that while no Eileen Fisher garments were being made in Xinjiang and that it wasn’t getting fabric or yarn from the region, the company didn’t know whether any of the cotton fiber it was using could be traced to Xinjiang.

阿普特说，虽然Eileen Fisher没有在新疆生产服装，也没有从该地区采购面料或纱线，但该公司不知道其使用的任何棉纤维是否会追溯到新疆。

“Two years of pandemic and a deteriorating political situation made it impossible to fully vet what is happening on the ground,” Ms. Apter said.

“两年的大流行和不断恶化的政治局势使我们无法全面审查当地正在发生的事情，”阿普特说。

The company debated what to do.

公司对于如何处理进行了讨论。

“You know, maybe this farm got certified, but we have no way to independently audit, the people are intimidated, the auditors don’t want to work on the ground anymore, it’s impossible to really go by that,” Ms. Apter said, recalling the discussion.

“就是说，也许这个农场获得了认证，但我们没有办法独立审计，人们被恐吓，审计员不想再做实地工作了，这些真的无法克服，”阿普特在回顾讨论时说。

By 2021, Eileen Fisher had removed any Xinjiang cotton fiber from its supply chain, she said.

她说，到2021年，Eileen Fisher已经把新疆棉从供应链中完全移除了。

L.L. Bean, the privately held outdoors retailer based in Maine, said in a statement that it had ceased sourcing from textile mills in Xinjiang in 2020 and “completely removed ourselves out of the cotton production process” in early 2021.

总部位于缅因州的私人户外用品零售商L.L.Bean在一份声明中表示，该公司已于2020年停止从新疆的纺织厂采购，并于2021年初“完全退出了棉花的生产过程”。

“We have full confidence in our due diligence process to state that none of our products are made with Chinese cotton or use forced labor,” the company said.

“我们对我们的尽职调查过程充满信心，完全可以说我们的产品没有使用中国棉或使用强迫劳动，”该公司说。

The decisions by smaller, privately owned companies to leave China have been more straightforward than they were for bigger retailers, which have cultivated a lucrative consumer market in the country. For fast fashion companies like H&M and luxury brands like Burberry, which has also been the target of boycotts, the decision ultimately amounts to picking a side: China or the rest of the world.

与大型零售商相比，规模较小的私营企业离开中国的决定更为干脆，而前者在中国培育出了一个利润丰厚的消费市场。对于H&M这样的快时尚公司，以及同样遭到抵制的巴宝莉等奢侈品牌来说，这个决定等于是二选一：选中国还是选世界其他地方。

“It’s very hard for a giant company,” said Michael Posner, who is the chair of the Fair Labor Association, a nonprofit organization that has worked with companies like Apple to investigate worker conditions at suppliers’ factories.

“对于一家大公司来说，这非常困难，”维护劳工权益协会的主席迈克尔·波斯纳说。该协会是一个非营利机构，曾与苹果等公司合作，调查供应商工厂的工人条件。

“It’s possible to say, ‘We’re trying,’ and they are, but they are nowhere close to achieving a system where their cotton comes from other places,” he added.

他还说，“可以说‘我们在努力’，它们确实在努力，但距离棉花完全来自其他地方还差得远。”

Many bigger companies outsource the manufacturing of their products to companies like Li & Fung, a Hong Kong-based company that connects big-brand retailers with manufacturers in China.

许多较大的公司将其产品的生产外包给利丰等公司，这是一家总部位于香港的公司，它将沃尔玛和拉夫劳伦等零售商与中国的制造商联系起来。

Li & Fung did not respond to a request for comment, but its chief executive, Joseph Phi, recently gave an interview to Nikkei Asia, a Japanese media group. When asked whether Li & Fung worked with factories in Xinjiang, Mr. Phi did not respond.

利丰没有回应置评请求，但该公司执行长彭焜耀近日接受日本媒体集团《日经亚洲》的采访，被问及利丰是否与新疆的工厂合作时，彭焜耀没有回应这个问题。

Instead, he told Nikkei that the subject of Xinjiang had become politicized and that Li & Fung was apolitical. “We don’t take certain positions,” he said.

他告诉日经，新疆问题已经政治化了，而利丰对政治不感兴趣。“我们不会采取某种立场，”他说。