Legal Brokers of Chinese Investment in Cambodia: Compliance Between Contract and Culture
研究了中国在柬埔寨投资中的法律中介如何扮演正式与非正式之间的双重角色，将非法资本转化为合法资本，对合规专业人士、市场准入和可持续发展有启示。
ABSTRACT In conventional understandings of compliance, lawyers and compliance officers internalize compliance within corporations. Complicating this model, this article argues that compliance professionals may occupy a Janus‐faced role between informality and formality. We use the case of “legal brokers” of Chinese investment in Cambodia as our empirical testing ground. Based on qualitative fieldwork conducted in Cambodia from 2019 to 2022, we find that legal brokers between Chinese investors and Cambodian counterparties are a vital feature of the market converting illicit into lawful capital. Our findings have implications for not just compliance professionals but also market entry, sustainable development, anti‐bribery, and rule of law. By drawing on theoretical literature including relational contract and guanxixue (the study of guanxi or “social ties”), we scale up our findings to conclude that a focus on legal brokers reveals a social reality that may be more emblematic for most of the world than the existing model.