Mining for Norms: International Extractivism, Chinese Business, and the Indeterminacy of Compliance in Kyrgyzstan

ABSTRACT In this article, we show how the study of compliance provides significant insights into the political and social tensions that shape Chinese business conduct in Kyrgyzstan's extractive industry and beyond. Drawing on interviews and analysis of legal documents, we first examine disputes between Chinese mining companies and Kyrgyz state institutions. These disputes demonstrate how the mundane workings of government bureaucracy foster a legal environment in which compliance is indeterminate. We argue that this indeterminacy—defined here as a social setting in which an action is neither predictably compliant nor noncompliant—provides a useful framework for analyzing interactions between mining companies and the state. We then move on to discuss how the establishment of international arbitration courts in Kyrgyzstan can be seen as an attempt to create new forms of compliance beyond this indeterminacy. We argue that looking at compliance through the lens of indeterminacy and examining ways of overcoming or managing it challenge the binary of compliance vs. noncompliance that continues to dominate social science literature on the subject. Finally, we maintain that the indeterminacy of compliance and the creation of new institutions both emerge from a legal environment that is shaped by broader political debate.