Question: what’s the link between ex-NME writer, tabloid columnist and best selling novelist of North London angst Tony Parsons and CSR in China?

Answer: He has a marvellously spot on description of the day-to-day working of CSR, venal lawyers, dodgy factory managers and faked inspections in his novel of ex-pat Shanghai life (My Favourite Wife )

Parsons latest novel is the tale of a rather green London lawyer despatched to Shanghai and dumped in the boom, gloom and craziness of the city without a clue. It’s 365 pages of every cliché about ex-pat life in Asia and Shanghai you’ve ever heard with the normal Parsons underlying moralising on unfaithful husbands, family life etc.

All quite dull but livened up briefly by a pretty good scene where the clueless lawyer is despatched to visit one of his dodgy client’s trouser factories in Shenzhen to oversee an ethical audit after some bad press about factory conditions from local NGOs.

Now I’ll leave aside the ridiculousness of having lawyers do factory audits (not uncommon in China) for their clients.

Parsons nicely juxtapositions the oft heard arguments of lawyers involved in some things 1) it’s all just part of China’s ‘industrial revolution and capital will always go where wages are lowest so why worry – in the end it will all work out and 2) the greenhorns approach of shock and horror at conditions in some factories.

I won’t quote at length – you can read the book yourself but after the audit they all end up back at a 5 star hotel a little rattled and one foreign lawyer explains the essence of the problem to another newly arrived in southern China:

“Mitch (a British lawyer in China) shook his head. ‘There’s no such thing as cheap clothes,’ he said. ‘The real price isn’t paid by the people who buy the stuff, it’s paid by the people who make it.’ He took a sip of his beer. ‘But we’re not here for them, are we? We’re here for our clients.’”

And thus ends the audit.



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