Steve Weaver

@Alfering @D162Michele Surely, it has to be a worth guest spot on Falun Gong's latest tour? 😉

@D162Michele @SteveWChina I'm waiting for the musical on Broadway 🤢🤮

Why do all these Chinese traitors all end up with book deals? The price of treason?

Sorry, @BBCNews @thetimes ? Why are the Russians aggravated at the presence of a "RAF Spy plane"? No, haven't a clue, beats me. 🤷‍♂️😏

@Alfering @D162Michele 😂

Here is an example of how China's law protects their citizens. This is from the studio of a celebrity I follow Ren Jialun 任嘉伦. Would we have the same protection here in the US? weibo.com/6135103753/528…

@Xinjiangstory That's a video I can taste! Brings back lots of happy memories!

Xinjiang kebab for dinner!

China is celebrating Tourism Day today, and global interest in "China Travel" is rising fast. According to the Association of Tour Operators of Russia, the number of outbound trips by Russian tourists increased 16% in 2025, while trips to China surged 33.6%. China has also entered the top 10 most popular overseas destinations for Russian travelers this summer. High-speed rail adventures, ancient cultural sites... China is becoming one of the hottest travel destinations. (Source: VCG) #ChinaTourismDay #ChinaTravel #Putin

Did someone tell you Islam was banned in China? Not so. This is a Mosque in Beijing. 👇

By James Ockenden ANTI-CHINA AGITATORS have wasted no time spinning the Hong Kong government’s latest olive branch to riot arrestees as “forced re-education”. But the new “Positive Guidance” program, which sees young arrestees from the 2019-20 riots offered the chance to wipe the slate clean, is a very welcome initiative from the Security Bureau and should be celebrated as as humane and empathetic way to deal with some of the youngsters caught up in 2019-20 unrest. . I PROPOSED AN AMNESTY Back in 2018, I proposed an amnesty programme for those convicted around “Occupy Central” and other anti-China movements. This seems naïve on reflection, given the dark forces proven to be lurking within many of those movements, but the idea was for reconciliation to open a dialogue and rescue those who had fallen into the honey-tongued trap of black-clad violence. The proposal fell on stony ground and I didn’t consider it wise to push the idea further after 2019. Publicly, at least, compassion for fringe cases was not a priority while urgent national security issues raged. . BEHIND THE SCENES Yet I knew from friends at the Correctional Services Department that the government was, behind the scenes, taking rehabilitation of convicted 2019 youth seriously. One fellow playgroup dad who worked at a prison had only good things to say about many of the imprisoned 2019 youngsters and their attitudes to self-improvement: his stories, and those from others, did not tally with the tales of prisoner life shared from outside Hong Kong nor with the angry missives of a few hard-core activists. Not much of the rehabilitation work was public until recently. But by the end of February, a total of 1,325 “black-clad violence”-related convicted persons had voluntarily joined Project PATH, a rehabilitation programme yielding an incredible 0.4 percent recidivism rate (against Hong Kong’s overall 22.4 percent rate). And while the government worked to extend rehabilitation “after the prison walls” for released convicts, work was also afoot to tackle another group “before the prison walls”–those young people arrested during black-clad protests but not yet charged. . LED BY A POPULAR SINGER That low-key campaign became the Positive Guidance programme now going viral around the world after singer Hins Cheung King-hin announced he would lead mentorship groups of arrestees to the Chinese mainland for rehabilitation tours. The new voluntary programme, building on Project PATH concepts, offers welcome relief for the thousands of youngsters trapped in the limbo of being arrested in 2019-20 but not yet charged. An estimated 5,000 youngsters can voluntarily join the programme, learning Chinese history, value systems, and techniques for rebuilding family relations. . ARE THEY ‘RE-EDUCATION CAMPS’? Critics who claim this is forcing young people into “re-education camps” are missing the point. First, of course, these are entirely voluntary. But more importantly, the education is hardly more arduous than a driver education programme and, given the trade-off – a dropping of potentially serious criminal proceedings – it must be viewed as an olive branch for reconciliation rather than anything nefarious. Critics also say arrestees are considered innocent under Hong Kong law, until proven guilty, and therefore “rehabilitation” requires some acknowledgement of guilt. . APOLOGY LAWS I would draw a parallel here with Hong Kong’s apology laws. These were introduced to allow parties to apologize to each other without admitting guilt or liability. Before those laws were introduced, saying sorry could be an expensive legal mistake. Likewise with rehabilitation of these arrestees, we need to get away from strict “guilty/innocent” labels if we are to achieve any reconciliation. . YOUNG PEOPLE ACTED ON IMPULSE Of course it’s not just the anti-China elements calling foul on the rehabilitation schemes. The more hawkish critics will say these youngsters were arrested for a reason and they should pay the price. Well, first of all, a fair number caught up during the social unrest were regular folk, curious about the unfolding events. At protests and riots, I saw some very bad people I hope are off the streets for a long time. But I also saw a lot of kids who’d never been, for example, on a traffic-free highway before and couldn’t quite believe the strange freedom that brings. Police scooping up lunchtime protest offenders would find they had netted an indiscriminate mix of truly deplorable violent rioters with petrol bombs and curious locals enjoying a spectacle. As a Security Bureau spokeswoman told me in response to questions on the rehabilitation scheme, many young people acted on impulse and were “unwittingly caught by the law. Many of them deeply regretted their actions.” . BEING ‘IN THE SYSTEM’ IS STRESSFUL But secondly, many of those arrestees have been on police bail for seven years now, and that’s no picnic. I know from personal experience the pain here, even without a charge. For some of those youngsters, any excitement or glamor at being handcuffed and bundled into the back of a police van in front of hundreds of thirsty foreign photographers would have dissipated extremely quickly as all the emotion, drama and nuance of the incident would be reduced to relentless paperwork. The weight of being “in the system” is hard to bear. Technically, under the law, you’re innocent… but it doesn’t feel that way when you’re spending every fourth Sunday reporting to a police station, and I admire those youth who went through that without spiralling into more trouble. And so, we should celebrate Positive Guidance and support all parties in achieving something we might have though impossible back in 2019. [James Ockenden is a Hong Kong based journalist.] [Friday news project]

The @RegionCanberra reported on the Duggans appeal. The Australian government have kept Dan Duggan, an Aussie citizen with no criminal record, locked in maximum security for 3 and a half years whilst he fights his extradition. The allegations against him were not a crime in Australia and happened 14 years ago. Dan joined numerous other pilots in instructing civilian pilots in 1960s aircraft in South Africa in 2012. No other pilots have been charged, no-one from the flight school has been charged and none of Dan’s co-conspirators have faced any charges. The Prime Minister and Attorney-General could step in at any time, revoke the extradition approval, and allow Dan to go home to his family. Enough is enough. Please help the family fund their Federal Court appeal, by donating: chuffed.org/project/109154… Read more of the article here: region.com.au/family-will-co…

Is Tibetan being preserved? We invite journalist Arnold August (@Arnold_August) to discuss his tour of Xizang/Tibet. 👇 youtu.be/bwQ0BXYog8U?si… youtu.be/bwQ0BXYog8U?si…

@D162Michele I see I'm going to be blocking a lot of out and out racists, today.

@SteveWChina Exactly, why do they not feel safe anyway?!

CCTV in London is to make women feel safe. But CCTV in China is COMMUNISM!!

@perfumeithaki @planet_holmes Damn right!👍

@planet_holmes @SteveWChina She is everything you said Dan …so much knowledge and analysis that you won’t find elsewhere in Britain. It’s why they, without ANY reason, destroyed her account.

Anna Chen has historical depth, multicultural clout, intellectual rigor and a sense of justice and fairness that most journalists (and even world leaders) dream of. Never miss a post of hers if you care about West vs East geopolitics.

"He told the BBC he felt lonely in prison, and hadn't had any contact with representatives of the British government: 'I served my country for 12 years in the [British] Army, and now, when I need help and medical treatment, no-one wants to know. This is a disgrace!'" If he thinks the Government would've treated him better as a British Soldier in time of war, he didn't have his eyes open for the 12 years he was in the service. The basic principle is don't get yourself engaged in someone else's proxy war and think that a nod and a wink from the UK Government is going to mean anything, when reality bites. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

@AmbJohnBolton Step 1: Have folks like John Bolton stop aggravating the situation. Step 2: US stops pumping weapons of war into the region. Step 3: US to facilitate accelerated talks to help the two integrate.

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂. Trump is certifiably insane and utterly deluded.