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Russia's exiled chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt was speaking after gunmen killed 19 people in the mainly Muslim region of Dagestan in southern Russia in attacks on churches, synagogues and the police.

"The Russian authorities during the last years have used the law enforcement authorities to repress any kind of opposition to the Kremlin, opposition to the war and any movements like the LGBT movement which was declared as extremist. People are sent to prison for criticising the war," Goldschmidt said in a video interview from Berlin.

"So instead of using law enforcement and the interior ministry and FSB (security service) to provide security for Russian citizens, it's being used to eradicate any opposition to the regime. And here we see the results, that such terrorists like ISIS are able to again and again mount successful attacks against houses of worship, against cultural events." [...]

Putin offers condolences

The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin expressed his deep condolences over Sunday's attacks, but it has not commented on who was to blame or why authorities failed to stop them.

[...]

Goldschmidt himself left Russia soon after the start of the war and has encouraged more Jews to follow his example rather than stay on in what he called a "semi-totalitarian" country.

"Tens of thousands of Jews left, and I'm happy they left," he said. "We are worried for all of those who are still there."

Archived link

Russia's exiled chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt was speaking after gunmen killed 19 people in the mainly Muslim region of Dagestan in southern Russia in attacks on churches, synagogues and the police.

"The Russian authorities during the last years have used the law enforcement authorities to repress any kind of opposition to the Kremlin, opposition to the war and any movements like the LGBT movement which was declared as extremist. People are sent to prison for criticising the war," Goldschmidt said in a video interview from Berlin.

"So instead of using law enforcement and the interior ministry and FSB (security service) to provide security for Russian citizens, it's being used to eradicate any opposition to the regime. And here we see the results, that such terrorists like ISIS are able to again and again mount successful attacks against houses of worship, against cultural events." [...]

Putin offers condolences

The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin expressed his deep condolences over Sunday's attacks, but it has not commented on who was to blame or why authorities failed to stop them.

[...]

Goldschmidt himself left Russia soon after the start of the war and has encouraged more Jews to follow his example rather than stay on in what he called a "semi-totalitarian" country.

"Tens of thousands of Jews left, and I'm happy they left," he said. "We are worried for all of those who are still there."

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The Russian division of the Bank of China has suspended operations with Russian lenders sanctioned by the United States in order to avoid being hit with secondary sanctions, the Kommersant business newspaper reported Monday, citing industry insiders.

The Bank of China’s Russian division — which specializes in yuan payments between Russia and China — is the second-largest Chinese banking subsidiary in the country [...]

Experts [said that this] would likely increase fraud risks given the subsequent shift to opaque intermediaries to process payments between Russian and Chinese entities.

“This is not very good news for the Russian market,” an anonymous industry insider was quoted [...]. “There will be additional costs both in time and the price of processing payments.”

"But the most important problem is that payments go beyond the banking sector, resulting in the state having less control,” the source added.

Archived link

The Russian division of the Bank of China has suspended operations with Russian lenders sanctioned by the United States in order to avoid being hit with secondary sanctions, the Kommersant business newspaper reported Monday, citing industry insiders.

The Bank of China’s Russian division — which specializes in yuan payments between Russia and China — is the second-largest Chinese banking subsidiary in the country [...]

Experts [said that this] would likely increase fraud risks given the subsequent shift to opaque intermediaries to process payments between Russian and Chinese entities.

“This is not very good news for the Russian market,” an anonymous industry insider was quoted [...]. “There will be additional costs both in time and the price of processing payments.”

"But the most important problem is that payments go beyond the banking sector, resulting in the state having less control,” the source added.

After a years-long legal saga, Wikileaks says that founder Julian Assange has left the UK after reaching a deal with US authorities that will see him plead guilty to criminal charges and go free.

Assange, 52, was charged with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information [...]

Assange will spend no time in US custody and will receive credit for the time spent incarcerated in the UK.

[He] will return to Australia, according to a letter from the justice department.

Archived link

Lai Ching-te once again called on China to accept the existence of Taiwan, a self-governing democracy that is claimed by Beijing but where its courts have no jurisdiction.

Democracy is not a crime and autocracy is the real “evil,” Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said Monday after China threatened to impose the death penalty in extreme cases for “diehard” Taiwan independence separatists.

China, which views Taiwan as its own territory, has made no secret of its dislike of Lai, who took office last month, saying he is a “separatist,” and staged war games shortly after his inauguration.

On Friday, China ramped up its pressure on Taiwan by issuing new legal guidelines to punish those it says support the island’s formal independence, though Chinese courts have no jurisdiction on the democratically governed island.

Asked about China’s move at a news conference at the presidential office in Taipei, Lai first reiterated his sympathy for recent flooding in southern China before responding.

“I want to stress: Democracy is not a crime; it’s autocracy that is the real evil. China has absolutely no right to sanction Taiwan’s people just because of the positions they hold. What’s more, China has no right to go after Taiwan people’s rights across borders,” he said.

According to China, anyone who does not uphold “reunification” is therefore a Taiwan independence supporter, Lai added.

“I also want to call on China to face up to the existence of the Republic of China and have exchanges and dialogue with Taiwan’s democratically elected, legitimate government,” he said, using Taiwan’s formal name. “If this is not done, relations between Taiwan and China will only become more and more estranged.”

Taiwan said that since Thursday, there has been a sharp increase in Chinese military flights as Beijing carried out a “joint combat readiness patrol” near the island.

From Thursday to Sunday, Taiwan says it detected 115 Chinese military aircraft operating nearby, getting as close as 31 nautical miles from the southern tip of the island.

Taiwan has said that for the past four years China has carried out regular military activity around the island as part of a “gray zone” pressure campaign.

Lai rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims and says only Taiwan’s people can decide their future. He has repeatedly offered talks with China but been rebuffed.

China says any move by Taiwan to declare formal independence would be grounds to attack the island.

The government in Taipei says Taiwan is already an independent country, the Republic of China, and that it does not plan to change that. The Republican government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war against Mao Zedong’s Communists.

Lai also faces domestic challenges, as his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost its majority in parliament in the same election in January that brought him to power.

Speaking at the same news conference, Lai said he would ask the constitutional court to stay a package of contested parliament reforms the opposition has passed and consider whether they comply with the constitution.

The opposition says the reforms, which among other things criminalize contempt of parliament by government officials, are needed to bring more accountability, but the DPP says they were forced through without proper discussion.

Archived link

Democracy is not a crime and autocracy is the real “evil,” Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said Monday after China threatened to impose the death penalty in extreme cases for “diehard” Taiwan independence separatists.[...]

On Friday, China ramped up its pressure on Taiwan by issuing new legal guidelines to punish those it says support the island’s formal independence, though Chinese courts have no jurisdiction on the democratically governed island. [...]

“I want to stress: Democracy is not a crime; it’s autocracy that is the real evil. China has absolutely no right to sanction Taiwan’s people just because of the positions they hold. What’s more, China has no right to go after Taiwan people’s rights across borders,” he said.[...]

“I also want to call on China to face up to the existence of the Republic of China and have exchanges and dialogue with Taiwan’s democratically elected, legitimate government,” he said, using Taiwan’s formal name. “If this is not done, relations between Taiwan and China will only become more and more estranged.”

Taiwan said that since Thursday, there has been a sharp increase in Chinese military flights as Beijing carried out a “joint combat readiness patrol” near the island.

Archived link

Lai Ching-te once again called on China to accept the existence of Taiwan, a self-governing democracy that is claimed by Beijing but where its courts have no jurisdiction.

Democracy is not a crime and autocracy is the real “evil,” Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said Monday after China threatened to impose the death penalty in extreme cases for “diehard” Taiwan independence separatists.

China, which views Taiwan as its own territory, has made no secret of its dislike of Lai, who took office last month, saying he is a “separatist,” and staged war games shortly after his inauguration.

On Friday, China ramped up its pressure on Taiwan by issuing new legal guidelines to punish those it says support the island’s formal independence, though Chinese courts have no jurisdiction on the democratically governed island.

Asked about China’s move at a news conference at the presidential office in Taipei, Lai first reiterated his sympathy for recent flooding in southern China before responding.

“I want to stress: Democracy is not a crime; it’s autocracy that is the real evil. China has absolutely no right to sanction Taiwan’s people just because of the positions they hold. What’s more, China has no right to go after Taiwan people’s rights across borders,” he said.

According to China, anyone who does not uphold “reunification” is therefore a Taiwan independence supporter, Lai added.

“I also want to call on China to face up to the existence of the Republic of China and have exchanges and dialogue with Taiwan’s democratically elected, legitimate government,” he said, using Taiwan’s formal name. “If this is not done, relations between Taiwan and China will only become more and more estranged.”

Taiwan said that since Thursday, there has been a sharp increase in Chinese military flights as Beijing carried out a “joint combat readiness patrol” near the island.

From Thursday to Sunday, Taiwan says it detected 115 Chinese military aircraft operating nearby, getting as close as 31 nautical miles from the southern tip of the island.

Taiwan has said that for the past four years China has carried out regular military activity around the island as part of a “gray zone” pressure campaign.

Lai rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims and says only Taiwan’s people can decide their future. He has repeatedly offered talks with China but been rebuffed.

China says any move by Taiwan to declare formal independence would be grounds to attack the island.

The government in Taipei says Taiwan is already an independent country, the Republic of China, and that it does not plan to change that. The Republican government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war against Mao Zedong’s Communists.

Lai also faces domestic challenges, as his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost its majority in parliament in the same election in January that brought him to power.

Speaking at the same news conference, Lai said he would ask the constitutional court to stay a package of contested parliament reforms the opposition has passed and consider whether they comply with the constitution.

The opposition says the reforms, which among other things criminalize contempt of parliament by government officials, are needed to bring more accountability, but the DPP says they were forced through without proper discussion.

Archived link

Lai Ching-te once again called on China to accept the existence of Taiwan, a self-governing democracy that is claimed by Beijing but where its courts have no jurisdiction.

Democracy is not a crime and autocracy is the real “evil,” Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said Monday after China threatened to impose the death penalty in extreme cases for “diehard” Taiwan independence separatists.

China, which views Taiwan as its own territory, has made no secret of its dislike of Lai, who took office last month, saying he is a “separatist,” and staged war games shortly after his inauguration.

On Friday, China ramped up its pressure on Taiwan by issuing new legal guidelines to punish those it says support the island’s formal independence, though Chinese courts have no jurisdiction on the democratically governed island.

Asked about China’s move at a news conference at the presidential office in Taipei, Lai first reiterated his sympathy for recent flooding in southern China before responding.

“I want to stress: Democracy is not a crime; it’s autocracy that is the real evil. China has absolutely no right to sanction Taiwan’s people just because of the positions they hold. What’s more, China has no right to go after Taiwan people’s rights across borders,” he said.

According to China, anyone who does not uphold “reunification” is therefore a Taiwan independence supporter, Lai added.

“I also want to call on China to face up to the existence of the Republic of China and have exchanges and dialogue with Taiwan’s democratically elected, legitimate government,” he said, using Taiwan’s formal name. “If this is not done, relations between Taiwan and China will only become more and more estranged.”

Taiwan said that since Thursday, there has been a sharp increase in Chinese military flights as Beijing carried out a “joint combat readiness patrol” near the island.

From Thursday to Sunday, Taiwan says it detected 115 Chinese military aircraft operating nearby, getting as close as 31 nautical miles from the southern tip of the island.

Taiwan has said that for the past four years China has carried out regular military activity around the island as part of a “gray zone” pressure campaign.

Lai rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims and says only Taiwan’s people can decide their future. He has repeatedly offered talks with China but been rebuffed.

China says any move by Taiwan to declare formal independence would be grounds to attack the island.

The government in Taipei says Taiwan is already an independent country, the Republic of China, and that it does not plan to change that. The Republican government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war against Mao Zedong’s Communists.

Lai also faces domestic challenges, as his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost its majority in parliament in the same election in January that brought him to power.

Speaking at the same news conference, Lai said he would ask the constitutional court to stay a package of contested parliament reforms the opposition has passed and consider whether they comply with the constitution.

The opposition says the reforms, which among other things criminalize contempt of parliament by government officials, are needed to bring more accountability, but the DPP says they were forced through without proper discussion.

• Citizens express concern over downturn as pressures mount
• Flurry of stabbings unusual in country where violence is rare

The reaction of Chinese social media users to a spate of recent violent attacks has exposed widespread discontent about the nation’s downturn, as economic pressures mount.

Shanghai police reported a stabbing Wednesday morning in one of the city’s metro stations, which — like other subway lines in major Chinese cities — has security checks at its entrances. The suspect was detained after injuring three people and the case is under investigation, police said in a statement.

In a country where violence is relatively rare, the incident became a top trending item on social media platform Weibo, garnering some 164 million reads with users speculating on the attacker’s motive. Some suggested the culprit was a stocks investor, a group battered during China’s $7 trillion market meltdown earlier this year.

“The pressure of this economic environment is cascading down to everyone, who may be pushed to the brink by a slight change in circumstances,” one user wrote. “Don’t provoke or bully others; you don’t know where their limits of outbursts are. Don’t let yourself become a victim of the economic climate.”

Another user posted: “When the economy is bad, social problems grow, people are becoming more aggressive.”

Police didn’t provide details of the culprit’s motive, and it was unclear if the attacks represented a surge in such incidents. But the public reaction underscored growing fears over China’s economic downturn, as a slump deepens in the property market where the bulk of household wealth is stored.

“It’s possible the attackers were themselves suffering from the economic slowdown and such anxiety,” said Hanzhang Liu, an assistant professor of political studies at Pitzer College in California. “But it’s even more likely that people are projecting their own anxiety when trying to understand why these incidents happen.”

Protests over the economy, especially the housing crash, have become more frequent and made up 80% of publicly recorded dissent last year, according to Freedom House’s China Dissent Monitor. Almost a third of office workers saw their salaries fall in that period, according to recruitment platform Zhaopin.

The Shanghai incident followed similar reports from across China. Four teachers from a US college were stabbed by a local man in the northeastern city of Jilin last week. The chairperson of a political consultative body in a county in Shanxi was killed at the start of June in a dispute over the cleanup of illegally-occupied state housing. In May, two died in another knife attack in a primary school in the southeastern Jiangxi province.

The Jiangxi attack was viewed more than 390,000 times on Weibo, with one user asking for tougher penalties as “the economy slows down, life becomes more torturing, and crazy people become more frequent.”

While authorities did not provide details of the motives for the Jiangxi and Shanghai attacks, one of the teachers injured in Jilin told Iowa Public Radio that the attacker was “unemployed and down on his luck,” attributing that information to local police.

China has long touted itself as the world’s safest nation. Authorities have rolled out at least four rounds of “strike hard” anti-crime campaigns since the 1980s. The Public Security Ministry said at a press conference in May that social order had been steadily improving over the past five years, with severe violent crime dropping 10.7% in 2023 compared to 2019.

That makes rare outbursts of public violence stand out. People across China were outraged two years ago, for example, when video clips appeared online showing men beating female diners at a barbecue restaurant.

Socially Disadvantaged

Chinese authorities are aware of the link between economic changes and rises in violence. The Guangdong Police College analyzed 140 high-profile cases of violent attacks from 2000 to 2021, concluding last year that most of the culprits didn’t have a prior criminal record.

Instead, China’s rapid economic transformation had put some segments of society at more of a disadvantage, leading them to vent their frustration through violence, according to the research. Due to tight controls of guns and explosives in China, knifing and car-ramming incidents have become more common.

Despite severe crime falling, Chinese authorities listed the prevention of extreme violence as a top priority for law enforcement in a work plan last year. The country is entering a time with a “large amount of social conflict and disputes that are difficult to discover, prevent and handle,” China’s security czar Chen Wenqing stressed in December.

Mental Health Issues

Beijing has even mobilized ordinary people to help stabilize society. Known as the “Fengqiao experience,” that system aims to get local residents to resolve conflicts at the grassroots level to prevent them from spilling over into broader troubles that bubble up to higher level officials.

The ruling Communist Party also created a social work department last year to strengthen its grip on community organizations. The low-key body, which now leads the national ombudsman office, vowed to help better coordinate social relationships and resolve conflicts in an article in March.

Mental health issues that built during China’s three years of Covid isolation, are being compounded by economic pressures including high youth unemployment, said Lynette Ong, professor of political science at the University of Toronto, who’s also a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.

“Acts of random violence could be seen as expression of pent-up social grievances in a high-pressured society,” she added.

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Even by conservative measures, researchers say that China's subsidies green-tech products such as battery electric vehicles and wind turbines is multiple times higher compared to the support granted to countriesin tbe European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The researchers conclude that the EU should use its strong bargaining power due to the single market to induce the Chinese government to abandon the most harmful subsidies.

TLDR:

• Quantification of overall Chinese industrial subsidies is difficult due to "China-specific factors”, which include, most notably, below-market land sales, but also below-market credit to state-owned enterprises (SOEs), support through state investment funds, and other subsidies for which there are no official numbers.
• Even when taking a conservative approach and considering only quantifiable factors of these subsidies, public support for Chinese companies to add up to at least €221.3 billion, or 1.73% of GDP in 2019. Relative to GDP, public support is about three times higher in China than in France (0.55%) and about four times higher than in Germany (0.41%) or the United States (0.39%).
• Large industrial firms such as EV maker BYD are offered disproportionately more support. The industrial firms from China received government support equivalent to about 4.5% of their revenues, according to a research report. By far the largest part of this support comes in the form of below-market borrowing.

Regarding electrical vehicles, the researchers write:

China’s rise to the world’s largest market and production base for battery electric vehicles has been boosted by the Chinese government’s longstanding extensive support of the industry, which includes both demand- and supply-side subsidies. Substantial purchase subsidies and tax breaks to stimulate sales of battery electric vehicles (BEV) are, of course, not unique to China but are also widespread within the EU and other Western countries, where (per vehicle) purchase subsidies have often been substantially higher than in China. A distinctive feature of purchase subsidies for BEV in China, however, is that they are paid out directly to manufacturers rather than consumers and that they are paid only for electric vehicles produced in China, thereby discriminating against imported cars.

By far the largest recipient of purchase subsidies was Chinese NEV manufacturer BYD, which in 2022 alone received purchase subsidies amounting to €1.6 billion (for about 1.4 million NEV) (Figure 4). The second largest recipient of purchase subsidies was US-headquartered Tesla, which received about €0.4 billion (for about 250,000 BEV produced in its Shanghai Gigafactory). While the ten next highest recipients of purchase subsidies are all Chinese, there are also three Sino-foreign joint ventures (the two VW joint ventures with FAW and SAIC as well as SAIC GM Wuling) among the top 20 purchase subsidy recipients.

Archived link

Even by conservative measures, researchers say that China's subsidies green-tech products such as battery electric vehicles and wind turbines is multiple times higher compared to the support granted to countriesin tbe European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The researchers conclude that the EU should use its strong bargaining power due to the single market to induce the Chinese government to abandon the most harmful subsidies.

TLDR:

• Quantification of overall Chinese industrial subsidies is difficult due to "China-specific factors”, which include, most notably, below-market land sales, but also below-market credit to state-owned enterprises (SOEs), support through state investment funds, and other subsidies for which there are no official numbers.
• Even when taking a conservative approach and considering only quantifiable factors of these subsidies, public support for Chinese companies to add up to at least €221.3 billion, or 1.73% of GDP in 2019. Relative to GDP, public support is about three times higher in China than in France (0.55%) and about four times higher than in Germany (0.41%) or the United States (0.39%).
• Large industrial firms such as EV maker BYD are offered disproportionately more support. The industrial firms from China received government support equivalent to about 4.5% of their revenues, according to a research report. By far the largest part of this support comes in the form of below-market borrowing.

Regarding electrical vehicles, the researchers write:

China’s rise to the world’s largest market and production base for battery electric vehicles has been boosted by the Chinese government’s longstanding extensive support of the industry, which includes both demand- and supply-side subsidies. Substantial purchase subsidies and tax breaks to stimulate sales of battery electric vehicles (BEV) are, of course, not unique to China but are also widespread within the EU and other Western countries, where (per vehicle) purchase subsidies have often been substantially higher than in China. A distinctive feature of purchase subsidies for BEV in China, however, is that they are paid out directly to manufacturers rather than consumers and that they are paid only for electric vehicles produced in China, thereby discriminating against imported cars.

By far the largest recipient of purchase subsidies was Chinese NEV manufacturer BYD, which in 2022 alone received purchase subsidies amounting to €1.6 billion (for about 1.4 million NEV) (Figure 4). The second largest recipient of purchase subsidies was US-headquartered Tesla, which received about €0.4 billion (for about 250,000 BEV produced in its Shanghai Gigafactory). While the ten next highest recipients of purchase subsidies are all Chinese, there are also three Sino-foreign joint ventures (the two VW joint ventures with FAW and SAIC as well as SAIC GM Wuling) among the top 20 purchase subsidy recipients.