Japan complains that China’s export control law is too broad and unclear
A Japanese government report has raised concerns regarding China’s Export Control Law, expressing reservations about its broad scope and potential impact and arguing that it extends export restrictions beyond necessary national security objectives.
The law covered weapons of mass destruction (‘WMD’) when it came into effect on December 2020, but draft implementing regulations were issued only in April last year, expanding the range of regulated items to include consumer products and technologies related to conventional weapons, the report noted.
The 16 June paper by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (‘METI’) noted that, ‘The Export Control Law adds a number of consumer products and technologies that are related to conventional weapons to the restricted items, and at the same time, ‘includes various new measures such as retaliatory measures, re-export measures, deemed export regulations, etc.’
Some measures, it said, may be regarded as ‘an excessive export restriction that has little relevance with the national security objective’ and may fail to satisfy GATT rules, particularly on the following points:
- The scope of items subject to control may be excessively broad in consideration of the fact that the policy objectives of the Law explicitly include protection of ‘state interests’.
- There remains a risk that disclosure of technologies could be required in the form of written application for export licences beyond the extent necessary for the determination of whether the regulation is applicable or not to the subject product or for identifying end users and end use.
- The law provides for retaliatory measures against discriminatory export restrictions imposed by other countries.
Giving a particular example of concerns for excessive scope of subject goods, METI noted that China published a draft regulation of rare earth management as of January 2021.
It explained: ‘As the draft regulations provides that export of rare earth “shall comply with the laws and regulations regarding export control and others”, it needs to be monitored closely whether there will be an impact on the export of rare earth products. In addition, the Draft Export Control Regulations for Dual-Use Items was issued as a subordinate regulation of the Export Control Law in April 2022. However, items covered by this draft are not listed and the details of re-exports etc. remain unclear. Therefore, it is necessary to continue to monitor the development of the draft closely.’
