Category: Uncategorized

The 20-something insurance executive had already reached an out-of-court settlement with his employer

A Japanese man who developed a mental illness after he was outed as gay by his boss at an insurance company has become eligible for workers’ compensation in what is believed to be the first such case in the country, the unnamed man’s support group revealed in a news conference on Monday.

The labor standards office determined last year that the young man’s psychiatric illness was caused by “outing as a form of power harassment,” validating his workers’ compensation claim, which the support group suggested was the first time an illness caused by outing was recognized as employment-related in Japan.

The insurer had already reached an out-of-court settlement with its former employee in 2020, admitting to the outing, acknowledging responsibility for his mental illness, and promising to educate its employees to prevent the situation from arising again. 

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The man nevertheless opted to pursue a workers’ comp claim, stating on Monday that if he had stayed silent, he would have been tolerating human rights abuse. He applauded the labor standards board’s decision and urged other victims of outing to seek help from authorities.

Just one month after joining an insurance agency in Tokyo in 2019, the man told his employer he was living with a male romantic partner, stressing that the information should remain private so that he could tell his colleagues when he felt comfortable doing so.

Several months later, a female part-time co-worker began avoiding him. She subsequently quit, and he discovered during her farewell party that she had learned he was gay – from his boss, who claimed to have spilled the beans on his employee’s behalf.

The boss laughed it off when confronted by his underling, explaining he “thought there was no problem telling that to just one person.”

However, the man lost trust in his boss and was later diagnosed with a mental illness that was not identified in news reports on the case. He took a leave of absence and ultimately quit the job after two years.

Tokyo’s Toshima Ward, where the insurance company is located, passed a law prohibiting disclosing people’s sexual orientation and gender identity without their consent in 2019, following in the footsteps of Kunitachi City, which banned outing the previous year after a graduate student at Hitotsubashi University fell to his death from a school building in an apparent suicide after the man he was pursuing romantically told his peers the student was gay.

Some 25% of LGBTQ Japanese people have faced outing, according to a survey cited by Kyodo News.

Wang Yi has returned to replace Qin Gang, who spent just seven months in office

China has announced the replacement of Foreign Minister Qin Gang with his predecessor, Wang Yi, who previously served in the role for almost a decade. 

The decision was confirmed on Tuesday during a meeting of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee. As well as replacing Qin, the committee appointed a new governor of the People’s Bank of China. The gathering appeared to have been expedited as the body typically convenes at the very end of the month. 

Neither the committee nor the Chinese Foreign Ministry provided any explanation for the reshuffle. 

The move means Qin has become China’s shortest-serving foreign minister, with his tenure lasting less than seven months. He had already been absent from public view for around a month, and skipped a meeting of leading diplomats from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) earlier in July for what were described as “health reasons.” 

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Arguably the most notable event of Qin’s short-lived tenure were the talks in June with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who became the most senior American official to visit Beijing since President Joe Biden took office in 2021. However, the two sides did not report any major breakthroughs as a result of the discussions.

Blinken’s visit was soon undermined by comments from Biden, who branded Chinese President Xi Jinping a “dictator” just days after the US diplomat had returned from the trip. China expressed “strong dissatisfaction and opposition” over Biden’s remarks, describing them as a “blatant political provocation.”

Qin was elevated to the role of foreign minister on December 30, 2022, having served as China’s ambassador to Washington for around 18 months. He replaced veteran diplomat Wang, who had led China’s Foreign Ministry since 2013. 

At the time, Wang assumed another senior diplomatic role as director of the Communist Party’s Central Committee Foreign Affairs Commission Office. Thus far it remains unclear if Wang will retain that post alongside his position as foreign minister.

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The iconic pair were a limited edition made in the 1990s only for employees.

 

The Chinese president reportedly warned in 2020 that a regional conflict could spiral out of control

With China “rising” and the West “declining,” Beijing must prepare for the outbreak of a war between both sides, Chinese President Xi Jinping told military leaders at a meeting in 2020, Japan’s Kyodo News reported on Monday.

Citing documents from a December 2020 meeting between Xi and the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Military Commission, the Japanese outlet claimed that Xi declared “the East is rising and the West is declining.”

Amid this shifting power balance, Xi predicted that a localized conflict could break out and widen, although he supposedly ruled out the possibility of a third world war. It is unclear where Xi saw such a conflict originating, but Kyodo News suggested that he viewed Taiwan as a likely flashpoint.

The documents were reportedly compiled after the 2020 meeting and issued to Chinese commanders and party officials last summer. By that point, Russia was fighting what President Vladimir Putin termed “the entire Western military machine” in Ukraine, and tensions between the US and China over Taiwan had reached a boiling point over US President Joe Biden’s repeated insistence that he would defend the Chinese-claimed island with military force.

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West not prepared for conflict with China – FT

At the time of Xi’s meeting, Russia’s military operation in Ukraine was still more than a year away, and although then-US president Donald Trump was waging a trade war against Beijing, relations between the two superpowers hadn’t yet reached the nadir that they would under the Biden administration.

Regardless, Xi reportedly stressed the need for the Chinese military to “prepare for the outbreak of a war and its chain reactions,” and ordered commanders to “be constantly ready for fighting” to defend China’s sovereignty and national interest.

Xi’s comments took place behind closed doors, but the Chinese leader often makes similar statements in public. He instructed troops to “comprehensively strengthen military training in preparation for war” during a visit to a command center last year, and in April told soldiers to focus their training toward “actual combat” in defense of China’s “territorial sovereignty and maritime interests.” 

While Xi has also referred to the West as “declining” before, he reportedly cautioned during the 2020 meeting that its military advantage “basically remains unchanged.” 

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