The Diet has passed a bill to enhance Japan’s economic security without sufficiently clarifying the specific implications of the new law.

Ensuring transparency and democratic decision making is vital for the government’s intervention in the private-sector economy. The law, however, leaves many of the details about how it will be actually enforced to government and ministerial ordinances to be issued in the future.

During the Diet deliberations on the bill, the government kept refusing to offer clear answers to questions concerning these issues. These facts raise concerns about the possibility that the legislation may allow the government to make excessive intervention in private-sector businesses.

The new law is designed to achieve four key policy goals. One is bolstering the supply chains of “specified important goods,” which are deemed vital for the nation’s economy and the people’s daily lives. A second goal is preventing the use of products with security concerns in facilities in 14 core infrastructure industries by introducing a system for advance screenings.

A third objective is promoting cooperation between the government and the private sector in research and development concerning cutting-edge technologies.

A fourth is safeguarding sensitive technological information contained in patent applications for nuclear power and sophisticated weapons technologies. Violations are punishable by imprisonment for up to two years.

The law empowers the government to provide support for companies involved in supplying “specified important goods” and issue advisories and orders to companies operating core infrastructure assets if it deems such an action is necessary as a result of its advance screenings.

The law provides for both incentives and penalties to secure cooperation from businesses for the nation’s economic security.

Asahi Shimbun editorials have called for serious attention to the legislation’s possible impact on international cooperation and economic activities while acknowledging the need for certain policy efforts to tackle new economic security challenges stemming from the changing international environment and technological trends.

The editorials have argued that the government should keep the scope of regulatory restrictions to a minimum to avoid serious negative repercussions.

The law does not disregard such concerns, stipulating that regulatory measures should be limited to the extent where they are recognized as “reasonably necessary” in consideration of their “effects on economic activities.”

But it leaves as many as 138 details to government and ministerial ordinances, including the list of “specified important goods” and core infrastructure facilities that are subject to advance screenings. This obscures the specifics of economic activities covered by the law and the restrictions they will be subject to.

When opposition lawmakers asked questions about these issues during the Diet deliberations on the bill, the government refused to discuss details, claiming there should be no presumptions. The government has not presented concrete measures to prevent arbitrary implementation or excessive intervention.

It is not uncommon to leave details of a new system to government and ministerial ordinances.

However, given the serious potential implications of the law, which could allow the government to make broad intervention in the private sector of the economy, the Diet should have been informed of such specifics as much as possible when it considered the bill.

Much of the blame rests with the government’s failure to offer detailed explanations. But it is also open to debate whether the opposition camp performed its watchdog role properly.

The committees of both houses that considered the bill passed a supplementary resolution urging the government to report how the law is being enforced to both the Diet and the people in addition to calling for respecting the independence of private-sector businesses.

The government should, at the very least, make sincere responses to the Diet’s calls as it decides on related government and ministerial ordinances. It needs to listen to the views and opinions of a broad range of organizations and people, including companies and researchers, as it sets out to clarify the rules for the restrictions.

Incentives and penalties to promote policy goals over which the government has strong discretion tend to generate collusive relations, such as the notorious “amakudari” practice of offering retiring senior government officials cushy jobs in the industries they have regulated, as well as various vested interests.

The economic security legislation should not be abused for such purposes. The Diet needs to step up its monitoring of the manner in which the government implements the new law.

--The Asahi Shimbun, May 13