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).
The tragedy of Yao’s left foot: Yao Ming will sit out the rest of the season and is at risk of underperforming at the Olympics. At Shanghai Scrap, Adam Minter blames overwork: several years of full NBA seasons plus duties for China’s national team that Yao is required to perform as a patriotic athlete:
The tragedy in this – for both China and the Houston Rockets – is that Yao’s laudable efforts to please both masters has resulted in an injury that will disappoint both. The Rockets are in the midst of their best run of Yao’s NBA career, and I think it unlikely that they’ll be able to repeat it. Likewise, China’s Olympic basketball team was not expected to win in Beijing, but it surely expected to place well, and Yao’s (presumably) superb play was the key. Now it’s not even clear that Yao will play in the Olympics. But if he does manage to appear, he’ll be doing it with all of the rust that accompanies rehab from a major injury, and his team and country will suffer for it.
First Yunnan – Vietnam highway completed: GoKunming.com reports:
The highway linking the town of Xinjie in Hekou County in southeastern Yunnan province with Lao Cai province in northern Vietnam was opened yesterday, marking completion of the first highway linking Yunnan with a neighboring country from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Mao and the marriage counselor: Jeremiah at the Granite Studio compares the Hundred Flowers Movement to a manipulative marriage spat:
Like a lot of marriages, Mao and the Party were in a bit of a rut, the passion was gone, they were missing the ZazaZoom. Not completely sure how best to rekindle the spark, Mao fell into a pattern that any $150/hour marriage counselor would quickly identify as "passive-aggressive."
First of all, his speech relied on the oft-used but fatally flawed strategy of fishing for compliments. In essence, he asked "You don’t really love me that much, do you?" — confident in his heart that there could be but one correct answer: "Yes, of course! Of course we love you Mao…"
New Beijing airport opens Friday: From The China Daily
Six international and domestic airlines will begin operating in the terminal Friday, while others will switch over from the other two terminals in March.
The new building was designed by Norman Foster.
See also this opinion piece in The Independent: The Chinese get things done — at a cost.
Peering into China’s sovereign wealth fund: Bloomberg reports:
When Lou Jiwei visited Switzerland one spring weekend in 1993, the Chinese government economist was so eager to see the inside of a Swiss bank that Credit Suisse Group opened its Zurich head office on a Sunday to show him around…
… Lou also stopped at the homes of farmers in the village of Weesen, an Alpine community with a population of 1,500 people and 3,000 cows. ‘He even looked inside the fridges and cupboards,’ says Dean LeBaron, a Boston-based fund manager who owns a vacation home in Weesen and hosted Lou’s visit. ‘He was very inquisitive.’
Today, investors, regulators and politicians are asking questions about Lou, now chairman of China Investment Corp. a sovereign wealth fund set up last year. Lou, 57, who’s never been a fund manager before, has about $200 billion in his care, $70 billion of which he will invest outside China…
…His first investments for CIC have had mixed results so far. He spent $3 billion in May for a 9 percent stake in Blackstone Group LP, the world’s biggest buyout fund, which has since lost almost half of its value. In December, he bet $5 billion for as much as 9.9 percent of Morgan Stanley, the second-biggest U.S. securities firm. As of Feb. 26, a 9.9 percent stake would have been worth $4.91 billion.
The article contains plenty of numbers about CIC, the Chinese sovereign wealth fund, and biographical detail about Lou.