Mandarin, which makes the Empire line in cottons in addition to the Dynasty silks and brocades, employs up to 1,300 workers. It provides a recreation room, catered meals and classes in English for its work force. Most of its permanent staff are highly skilled people, like the young sewing-machine operator who stitches intricate rose and tea-leaf designs on quilted fabrics at high speed, working from memory with unerring accuracy. The cutters, tailors, and pressers are advanced craftsmen, trained by long apprenticeship.
Mandarin introduces about fifteen new silk and brocade patterns each year, originated by its own designer, Doris Saunders, with such names as Cherry Blossom, Ivory Blue, Sing Song and Garland. Its stockroom carries nearly 500 patterns, including as many as eight different color variations on a single pattern. Wives of visiting VIPs often tend to go haywire when exposed to this exciting inventory, and have had to be led or dragged away from the shelves. Most of the brocades are woven by the Fou Wah mills in Tsuen Wan. Finished garments are packed in waterproof paper and special shipping boxes and sent to the U.S. by air express or sea freight.
Mandarin keeps its finger on the high-fashion pulse through its Dynasty Salon in the colony’s Hotel Peninsula, but it also cagily remains in touch with a wider and less sophisticated market by noting what the American sailors buy at its servicemen’s outlet in Wanchai, where the fleet comes in.
Textiles have become the largest single factor in the colony’s economy. Textile exports totaled $273.5 million in 1960, or 55 percent of the colony’s entire domestic exports. In 1961, textiles constituted 52 percent of all exports. The industry employs 42 percent of all the workers in registered and recorded industries. It has a capacity of 614,000 spindles and 18,700 looms.
All this is cause for rejoicing in Hong Kong textile circles, but to textile producers in England, the United States and Canada, it is a problem that becomes greater all the time. The United States absorbed 31 percent of the colony’s textile exports in 1960, and the British Isles were a close second with 26 percent. Textile exports to the United States took a sharp drop in 1961, while those to the British Isles showed only a slight decline.
There was much concern among Lancashire mill-owners when Hong Kong cottons began to hit the English market. American textile producers and textile union leaders joined in a protest that was echoed with lesser volume by the Canadian textile industry. In all three countries, textile men declared that if they had to compete with Hong Kong’s low wage-scales, they would be driven to the wall.
American textile producers have their own special complaints against the Hong Kong industry. They point out that because of the existing price differential, Hong Kong can buy U.S. cotton at 8½ cents less per pound than American mills can, and that the colony has been stocking up heavily on it. In 1960, Hong Kong imported 55 percent of its raw cotton from the United States. The U.S. textile men say that while Japan’s textile exports have been held down by a five-year quota limitation, Hong Kong has rushed in to sell America the items that Japan agreed not to sell.
The demand for restrictions on colony textile exports to the United States began in 1958. United States officials visited the colony in 1959 with a proposal for a voluntary cut in the exports. The Hong Kong garment manufacturers proposed a three-year quota arrangement, starting in July, 1960, to hold exports to the 1959 level, plus 15 percent on cotton blouses and blouse sets, shorts and trousers, sport shirts, brassieres and pajamas. American textile producers immediately rejected the proposal as far too generous to Hong Kong competitors.
During the negotiations, American importers placed huge orders with Hong Kong to get in ahead of the threatened limitations. When the agreement blew up, they found an interesting variety of reasons why they couldn’t accept most of what they had ordered, such as late deliveries, and unsatisfactory quality. Exports to the U.S. dropped and the decline persisted into 1961.
In May, 1961, President Kennedy proposed an international textile conference to work out some agreeable way to control textile exports. The United States then suggested that Hong Kong cut its textile exports at least 30 percent below the levels of 1960. But the word “quota” had assumed a fearsome aspect in Hong Kong because of a textile agreement involving the colony, England, India and Pakistan. Hong Kong had agreed to limit its exports to the British Isles, provided that Pakistan and India would do the same. In 1961, the Hong Kong industry began to suspect that India and Pakistan might jump the traces, leaving the colony interests holding the bag.