TOKYO, Feb. 16, 2024—Two examples of excessive Japanese government red tape surfaced recently, underscoring why regulations are choking off growth and nudging the country down the global GDP slope to fourth in 2023, and most likely even lower over the coming years.
On Jan. 19, 2024, a government advisory panel handed a final draft report on a security clearance system to be implemented from next year. Highlighting the report is a cobweb of definitions of what constitutes classified information owned and handled by private entities and individuals, and penalties to be leveled against violations. The drafted system would be administered by amending the Law of Specific Secret Protection.
The system was drafted to prevent hi-tech research R&D and sensitive information leakage to China, Russia, North Korea and other countries deemed as hostile to Japan, such as joint R&D with U.S. and European entities for next-gen semiconductors, as well as power grid and other social infrastructure.
In actual enforcement, the system demands that private entities and individuals disclose all classified information to and seek authorization of the government as to the level of disclosure and sharing of such information with business partners in joint R&D research and development.
Those engaged in handling confidential information can do an R&D project, for example, up to 10 years, and information leakage to third parties that occurred during the period will be subject to 5 year prison terms plus 5 million yen ($35,000) fine.
This is enough to make R&D lab researchers to squirm and shrink, affecting their ambitions to develop novel ideas and technologies in consultation with other researchers, analysts said.
(Details at: https://www.cas.go.jp/jp/seisaku/keizai_anzen_hosyo_sc/pdf/torimatome.pdf)
No truck stopping
The Japanese government separately is in the process of amending the Distribution Efficiency and Optimization Law and Freight Motor Vehicle Transport Business Law, probably for enforcement in 2025, requiring logistics businesses to submit reports on improving truck freight work. Failure to submit reports and show actual improvements will be subject to government corrective orders.
What this means for big-rig drivers is that they will be banned from driving more than fixed numbers of hours a week or month. On the road, they cannot sleep in the trucks they drive at truck stops because it would be counted as part of drive hours, or killing time at expressway service areas.
On January 26, 2024, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport issued a remedy recommendation to a cargo consigning company and two freight companies to correct long stand-by time for their trucks.
The two regulatory changes would further lower Japanese companies’ productivity, which has been on a steady decent for years, as they need to spend more time at compliance with the regulations, analysts said.
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