China is the world’s factory for cars, toys and computers. But not sneakers. China is losing that title to Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City.

中国是汽车、玩具和计算机的世界工厂，但运动鞋除外。越南的胡志明市正取而代之。

Factories that ring the fast-paced city churn out foam soles, squishy insoles, cotton laces and mesh fabric. The parts are ferried by trucks to warehouses to be assembled into shoes. Then at nearby ports, shipping containers are stuffed with boxes for Nike, Adidas, Saucony and Brooks Sports and sent down the Dong Nai River to the sea.

在这座节奏飞快的城市周边，工厂源源不断地生产出泡沫鞋底、柔软鞋垫、棉线鞋带与网眼面料。卡车将这些部件运至仓库，组装成鞋。随后，在附近港口，装满耐克、阿迪达斯、索康尼和布鲁克斯体育鞋盒的集装箱沿着同奈河顺流而下，驶向大海。

For the business world, quitting China is hard to do, with its hold on raw materials and its factory prowess that has powered profits and kept consumers happy. The sneaker industry is showing how it can be done. Big brands still have huge factories in China that now mostly make shoes that are sold in China. But Vietnam has overtaken China as the No. 1 source of sneakers sold to the world by Nike, Adidas and Brooks and others.

对商界而言，脱离中国并非易事——中国掌控原材料，制造业实力雄厚，既支撑企业盈利，又满足消费者需求。但制鞋业正展示出去中国化的可行路径：各大品牌在中国仍有大型工厂，如今这些工厂主要生产在中国本土销售的鞋子；而在面向全球市场的运动鞋供应方面，越南已超越中国，成为耐克、阿迪达斯、布鲁克斯等品牌的最大产地。

The emerging centrality of Vietnam to the business of making sneakers hit home on April 3. After President Trump threatened Vietnam with a 46 percent tariff, the stock prices of Nike and Adidas came crashing down. The two countries have since announced an initial trade pact that lowered the new tariffs to 20 percent.

越南在全球运动鞋制造领域的核心地位在4月3日引发强烈震动：特朗普总统威胁对越南征收46%关税后，耐克与阿迪达斯股价应声暴跌。此后，两国达成初步贸易协定，将新关税降至20%。

The uncertainty that Mr. Trump’s tariffs have caused over costs is forcing a reckoning in the industry. Nike said global tariffs would lead to around $1 billion in extra costs this year. To blunt the impact, it is scaling down production further in China, where tariffs are now higher than they are in Vietnam. But some companies, worried about being too dependent on any one country, are also debating whether to move work out of Vietnam.

特朗普关税政策引发的成本不确定性正迫使整个行业进行反思。耐克表示，今年的全球关税或将带来约10亿美元的额外成本。为减轻影响，耐克正进一步缩减在中国的产能——目前中国的关税已高于越南。但由于担心过度依赖单一国家，部分企业也在讨论是否要将产能迁出越南。

China opened its economy. Then Vietnam did, too.

中国率先开放经济，越南紧随其后

The industry began hopscotching across Asia in pursuit of lower costs and wages in the 1970s. That is when brands like Nike, a newcomer at the time, turned to factories in South Korea and Taiwan to ramp up as sneaker culture took hold in the United States. Factories in East Asia could make shoes cheap, fast and on a huge scale.

20世纪70年代，为追求更低成本与薪资，制鞋业开始在亚洲各地辗转布局。当时，运动鞋文化在美国兴起，耐克等新兴品牌纷纷转向韩国和台湾的工厂扩大生产——东亚工厂能以低成本、高效率实现大规模鞋类生产。

China opened its economy to foreign companies in the 1980s, and with it access to hundreds of thousands of workers. Suddenly, China was cheaper and more attractive. The South Korean and Taiwanese companies working for global sneaker brands quickly moved much of their factories to China.

20世纪80年代，拥有大量劳动力资源的中国向外资企业开放市场，瞬间成为成本更低、吸引力更大的选择，为全球运动鞋品牌代工的韩国和台湾企业迅速将大部分工厂迁至中国。

But quietly Vietnam was making its own disruptive changes to a Communist-controlled economy, and by the early 2000s, China’s neighbor to the south was on everyone’s radar.

越南则在悄悄对其共产主义体制经济进行突破性改革。到21世纪初，这个中国的南部邻国已引起所有人的关注。

“It was like the opening up of China,” said Tony Le, an American sneaker executive who moved to Ho Chi Minh City from Portland, Ore., with Brooks in 2019. “This was now the opening up of Vietnam.”

“这就像当年中国开放一样，”美国制鞋行业高管托尼·黎（音）说。2019年，他随布鲁克斯公司从俄勒冈州波特兰市迁至胡志明市，“现在轮到越南开放了。”

Mr. Le, who had fled Vietnam in 1976 at the age of three after the end of the Vietnam War, long believed his home country’s time would come. He spent two months in China in 1997, working as a trainee for Adidas, and was awed by China’s size. Taiwanese companies like Pou Chen, which had tens of thousands of workers in China, had built factories that were like “little towns,” he said.

1976年越南战争结束后，三岁的黎逃离越南，但他一直坚信祖国终将迎来属于自己的时代。1997年，他在阿迪达斯实习，在中国待了两个月，中国的规模让他惊叹。他表示，宝成集团等台湾企业在中国拥有数万员工，其工厂规模堪比“小城”。

资深运动鞋行业高管托尼·黎见证了该产业从台湾和韩国转移至中国和越南的过程。

In the mid-2000s, Mr. Le was working for Nike as it started using Vietnamese factories to make basic shoe products.

2000年代中期，托尼·黎任职于耐克，当时该公司开始委托越南工厂生产基础款鞋类产品。

“Deep down, I was rooting for the country to get into this industry,” Mr. Le said.

“我打心底里希望祖国能进入这个行业，”托尼·黎说。

It didn’t take long. In the 2010s, Chinese workers were demanding higher wages and its companies were becoming adept at making copy cat products, often infringing on foreign copyrights. Global brands were compelled to look to diversify.

这一天很快到来。2010年代，中国工人开始要求提高工资，中国企业也愈发擅长制造仿冒产品，经常侵犯外国版权，全球品牌不得不寻求多元化布局。

Vietnam offered a government that welcomed foreign investment and the best kind of demographics: a growing population of young people looking for work. By the time of Mr. Trump’s first presidency in 2017, factories in Vietnam were grinding out running shoes, even as brands deepened their presence in China for the local consumer market. After Mr. Trump confronted China on trade in 2018, other multinational companies across industries followed the footwear industry into Vietnam.

越南则提供了友好的投资环境：政府欢迎外资，且拥有绝佳的人口结构——不断增长的年轻待业人口。2017年特朗普首次就任总统时，越南工厂已在批量生产跑鞋，尽管各大品牌也在为抢占中国本土消费市场而加深在华布局。2018年特朗普在贸易问题上对中国采取强硬态度后，各行业的跨国企业纷纷效仿制鞋业进入越南。

For the most part, though, sneaker companies were still reliant on China for raw materials and components like rubber and insoles.

不过，当时制鞋企业在很大程度上仍依赖中国供应橡胶、鞋垫等原材料和部件。

Everything changed in 2020, when China shut its borders near the start of the Covid-19 outbreak. Business leaders with factories that were shut down realized how dependent they were on China. It was not a difficult choice for shoe executives to start shifting resources into Vietnam.

2020年新冠疫情爆发初期，中国关闭边境，一切随之改变。在那些工厂被迫停工的企业，管理者们终于意识到自己对中国的依赖程度。对制鞋行业高管而言，将资源转移到越南已成为顺理成章的选择。

“It’s a much more localized supply chain than other industries,” said Bob Shorrock, a longtime executive in the sporting goods industry. “There is a need for speed to market, and the long term partners have already made investments in the supply chain.”

“相比其他行业，制鞋业的供应链本地化程度高得多，”长期从事体育用品行业的高管鲍勃·肖罗克表示。“这个行业需要快速响应市场，长期合作伙伴也已经对供应链进行了投资。”

A supply chain with ‘little reliance on China.’

“低中国依赖度”的供应链

Consider the journey of the shoe last, a mold shaped like a foot and used to pull a shoe into shape.

这里以鞋楦的生产流程为例，这种足形模具用于将鞋体定型。

Long before a sneaker is placed on a store shelf, and before it is stitched and glued together, it needs a last. Jones & Vining, a Boston-based company that has been making lasts for 90 years, followed clients like Puma, Nike and Adidas to Vietnam in 2011. It now has 500 workers in the country, cranking out 500,000 lasts each year, as well as 20 million pairs of insoles and 120 million pairs of footbeds. About 70 percent of what the factory makes is supplied to other shoe factories nearby.

一双运动鞋在摆上货架之前，需先经过鞋楦定型，再进行缝合与粘合。总部位于波士顿的琼斯维宁公司有90年制楦历史，2011年便随彪马、耐克、阿迪达斯等客户进入越南。如今，该公司在越南拥有500名员工，每年生产50万双鞋楦、2000万双鞋垫和1.2亿双鞋床，其中约70%供应给附近的其他制鞋厂。

At a Jones & Vining factory, an hour’s drive from Ho Chi Minh City, workers fill metal molds with hot, gooey and brightly colored liquid to make foam insoles and foot beds. At a different station, bits of plastic swirl inside a machine that shaves a mound into the shape of a foot.

在距离胡志明市一小时车程的琼斯维宁工厂内，工人将温热、黏稠、色彩鲜艳的液体注入金属模具，制作泡沫鞋垫与鞋床；在另一工位，机器将块状材料削成脚的形状。

Each morning, not long after the sun rises, half a dozen trucks are loaded and sent to factories nearby.

每天清晨太阳升起后不久，就有六辆卡车装满货物，驶向附近的工厂。

在运动鞋被缝制、粘合或摆上货架之前，一切始于鞋楦。在另一处工位，塑料屑飞舞，机器正将一堆坯料雕琢成脚的形状。

The initial trade deal between Vietnam and the United States that was announced in July has left many questions unanswered. One of the biggest questions involves goods that are transshipped. The Trump administration wants to slow the flow of goods onto American shores that start in China and pass through countries like Vietnam. It said it would impose a 40 percent tariff on such imports but has not said how it would define what qualifies.

今年7月，美国与越南达成的初步贸易协定仍留下诸多悬而未决的问题，其中最关键的问题之一是转运商品：特朗普政府希望遏制源自中国、经越南等国转运至美国的商品流入，并表示将对此类进口商品征收40%的关税，但尚未明确界定判定标准。

Shoe production in Vietnam has “very little reliance on China,” said Jim Salzano, the chief executive of Jones & Vining. But some materials still come from China, despite the build out of the Vietnamese supply chain.

“越南的运动鞋生产对中国的依赖程度很低，”琼斯维宁公司首席执行官吉姆·萨尔扎诺表示。不过，尽管越南供应链已逐步完善，部分原材料仍需从中国进口。

On most days, trucks crawl along the highway that connects the country’s shoe factories to Ho Chi Minh City and its ports. They pass dozens of lots filled with diggers and dirt movers for rent and yards with stacks of shipping containers.

如今，在连接越南各地制鞋厂与胡志明市及港口的高速公路上，卡车终日缓慢行驶。沿途可见数十个堆放着待租挖掘机与运土车的场地，以及堆满集装箱的货场。

Selling sticky rice cakes on the side of the road, Pham Kieu Diem, 47, recalled when rice fields surrounded the whole area.

47岁的范乔蝶（音）在路边卖糯米糕，她回忆起当年这一带全是稻田的景象。

“There were no factories and only one or two houses in the long stretch here,” she said.

“那时候没有工厂，这么长一段路只有一两户人家，”她说。

In July 1995, a factory known as Viet Vinh was erected on some former rice fields. “I remember that date, because I was among the first workers who worked there,” Ms. Diem said.

1995年7月，一家名为“越荣”（音）的工厂在一片稻田上建成。“我记得这个日子，是因为我是第一批进厂的工人，”范乔蝶说。

She was 17 at the time and stayed on for 19 years. “I didn’t know how to make shoes, and I had never worn sneakers before,” she said. Ms. Diem had dropped out of school in ninth grade to help her family grow rice and beans.

当时17岁的她，在工厂工作了19年。“我当时既不会做鞋，也从没穿过运动鞋，”她说。她九年级时就辍了学，帮家里种水稻和豆子。

“The money we got — me and my two sisters — we saved and bought some land,” Ms. Diem said. “We built a house on it so it helped with our income and changed our life for the better.”

“我和两个姐妹把赚来的钱攒起来，买了块地，在上面盖了房子。这不仅增加了收入，还让我们的生活变得更好了，”范乔蝶说。

1995年，范乔蝶是首批进入越南耐克鞋厂工作的工人之一。大多数日子里，卡车从制鞋厂沿着高速公路缓慢驶向胡志明市的港口，途经造船厂。