Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the “From the Web” links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).
Thoughts and more on editor Yu Huafeng’s release from prison: At Global Voices Online, John Kennedy rounds up some blogger responses to the release of Yu Huafeng, the former general manager of Southern Metropolis Daily, who was jailed after the SARS affair on charges of embezzlement. From the blog of his lawyer, Xu Zhiyong:
Never before has someone convicted of embezzlement consistently received so much respect and love from their own workplace colleagues. Even when when was in prison, Old Yu went on as normal issuing strategies and suggestions. During those years, from the executives at Southern Media Group down to the ordinary employees, group after group paid him visits, sending joint letter joint letter of appeal. Old Yu suffered for Southern Daily Group, and for the cause of press freedom in China, and to have defended this "criminal", I feel truly proud.
The political re-education of Rupert Murdoch: At Slate, Jack Shafer reviews Rupert’s Adventures in China, by Bruce Dover, once Murdoch’s right-hand man:
Because sucking up to government bigwigs has served Murdoch very well on several continents, Dover writes, the tycoon believed that China’s hostility to Star, which he bought into in 1993, could be overcome. If he could sit down with the proper political leaders, he was certain he could reach an accommodation that benefited all.
But the powerful Chinese potentates routinely snubbed Murdoch, dispatching him and his underlings to speak with powerless junior officials. Dover writes that the "Chinese were well aware of his proclivity to involve himself in a nation’s politics if it were to the advantage of his business interests," and they weren’t going to budge. The prospect of a Westerner beaming uncensored TV signals directly into Chinese homes appalled the country’s leaders.
China intervenes to stave off “super consolidation”: At Mining Weekly, Keith Campbell suggests that BHP Billiton’s attempt at a hostile takeover of Rio Tinto was scuttled by ignorance of historical and cultural context:
The Chinese economy, the basis of the country’s power and the source of wellbeing of its people, is today dependent on the import of key inputs. This has been the case since the 1990s. This is also probably the first time in China’s some 4 000-year history that the country has been so dependent on such crucial imports.
This must have created a degree of insecurity among China’s topmost decision-makers in the government, the Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). But businesspersons are not famed for their knowledge of, or sensitivity to, history.
The PLA – this is the name for the Chinese armed forces as a whole – is also the second most powerful institution in China after the Communist Party itself. Its influence spreads far beyond purely military matters, and it is doubtful that anyone at BHP Billiton ever bothered to try and meet with key figures in the PLA General Staff.
Blue truck taxi drivers on hunger strike in Ningbo!: Jesse Owen at the Blue Third World blog has news and photos about taxi drivers protesting outside of the Ningbo Bureau of Transportation:
The protestors gave me a newspaper article (available here in Chinese), even though it is from the People’s Daily it does explain the story a bit. Apparently they drivers had to pay a high license registration fee, several tens of thousands of RMB (they told me 20,000rmb or US$3000), but the government changed the blue truck taxi policy to be more liberal, for there to be more competition. So the requirements for people who wanted to get the license later on was lower and the new drivers didn’t have to pay such high fees. The old drivers think this is quite unfair, to waste all their money on a large fee that was then reduced and at the same time having to enter into greater competition.