Making Law: Small-Scale Trade and Corrupt Exceptions at the Vietnam-China Border

Abstract

In Vietnam's postreform era, the proliferation of profiteering opportunities have, in addition to creating new forms of corruption, transmuted previously prevailing types of corrupt acts in multiple ways across different levels of state-society relations. Everyday corrupt practices have thus become an essential means of economic survival for many. Starting from the metaphorical framing of petty bribery as "making law," I propose the notion of what I term "corrupt exception" as a conceptual tool to explore the power dynamics of petty corruption between state agents and small-scale traders at the Vietnam-China border. Whereas bribery is felt by local traders to create better profit opportunities, the corrupt exception likewise pushes them into a de facto illegality where they remain subjected to arbitrary "lawmaking" and excluded from legal protection. I show that the metaphors employed by small-scale traders to negotiate complicit relationships with corrupt state officials both contest and reinforce the exercise of a localized form of sovereign power in a permanent state of corrupt exception in which "law" is "made" in exchange for bribes. [corruption, cross-border trade, metaphor, exception, sovereign power, Vietnam, Lào Cai City] RESUMEN A través de los distintos niveles de las relaciones Estado-sociedad en la era post-reforma de Vietnam, la proliferación de oportunidades de beneficio ha transformado en múltiples maneras las formas de corrupción anteriormente prevalecientes, al tiempo que han surgido nuevos tipos de actos corruptos. Así, las prácticas cotidianas de corrupción han devenido un medio esencial de subsistencia económica para muchos. A través de la interpretación metafórica de la pequeña corrupción como "hacer ley," propongo el término "excepción corrupta" como una herramienta conceptual para explorar las dinámicas de poder de la pequeña corrupción en la frontera entre Vietnam y China. Al tiempo que el soborno es percibido por los comerciantes locales como una herramienta para crear mejores oportunidades de beneficio, la excepción corrupta los conduce a una ilegalidad de facto dentro de cuyo marco dichos comerciantes permanecen sujetos a un "hacer ley" arbitrario y, por lo tanto, los excluye de cualquier protección legal. En este artículo muestro que las metáforas utilizadas por los pequeños comerciantes para negociar una complicidad compartida con los oficiales estatales corruptos, desafían, al tiempo que refuerzan, el ejercicio de un poder soberano localizado en un permanente estado de excepción corrupta donde "la ley" es "hecha" en el intercambio de los sobornos. [corrupción, comercio transfronterizo, metáfora, excepción, poder soberano, Vietnam, Ciudad Lào Cai] E very morning, scores of Vietnamese transporters and trader intermediaries gather at the Lào Cai-Hekou border gate and wait for the checkpoint to open at 7:00 a.m.

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