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).

Reference News image from Xinhua

China still a small player in Africa: From Pambazuka News:

What I find a bit reprehensible is the tendency of certain Western voices to … raising concerns about China’s attempt to get into the African market because it is a bit hypocritical for Western states to be concerned about how China is approaching Africa when they have had centuries of relations with Africa, starting with slavery and continuing to the present day with exploitation and cheating.

China should go forth, write and conquer: China Machete gives the Chinese press a dressing-down in the wake of whinging about western media bias:

China is doing a great job perpetuating the domination of the Western media. Two of its most popular newspapers, the Global Times and Information Reference, derive most of their content from foreign media reports. How can you complain about Western media bias when it is one of your main sources of information? I think Chinese journalists spend most of their time hiding behind the words of the Western media, e.g. so and so said this about the PLA and this US professor said that China has many economic problems. The problem with the Chinese media is that hardly anybody voices their own personal opinion about anything, so the whole world relies on foreign reports.

Google ads on Beijing tricycles: Photos from the Go Too Far East blog: Is Google advertising on the sides of Beijing tricycles (三轮车)?

Tîbet and the environment: Alex Pasternack has posted an article on Treehugger that rounds up a good variety of sources about problems in Tîbet, including environmental issues.

Defeating the Nanny: blog hosting: Thomas Crampton has a post titled 'Best blog hosting service to sidestep China’s Great Firewall?' that has also elicited some useful feedback in the comments.

Idiot-proof: At the That's Beijing website, Kaiser Kuo reviews China for Dummies: Making the Inscrutable Chinese more Scrutable, a guide to China written by the late Harry O. Chestnut:

With an historian’s subtle grasp of China’s 5,000-year history (the author holds an M.A. in Asian Studies from the University of Southwestern Kentucky), Mr. Chestnut gives us a clear understanding of those timeless cultural forces that continue to shape the Chinese way in business. "Business is warfare," he says, "and the Chinese literally wrote the book." In just six chapters, Chestnut succeeds in distilling the ancient wisdom of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, and the classic works of just about every other notable Tzu not into nebulous platitudes, but rather into actionable insights that you can put to work at the negotiating table, in your marketing plan, or in managing your Chinese staff.

Returning home, remembering: The bezdomny ex patria blog translates a poignant blog post about catching up with old friends.

Fallen Shanghai mayor in the dock: From the International Herald Tribune:

The trial of Shanghai's former Communist Party chief, who was ousted in a sweeping corruption cleanup that began nearly two years ago, has begun in the northeastern city of Tianjin, reports said Thursday.

The official Xinhua News Agency said Chen Liangyu, the highest party official to be ousted in more than a decade, is being tried in the Tianjin No. 2 Intermediate People's Court.

Weather engineering in China: MIT's Technology Review looks at how China is preparing to guarantee good weather for the Olympic Games:

The Chinese began experimental weather engineering in 1958 to irrigate the country's north, where average yearly rainfall compares with that during the American Dust Bowl of the 1930s, and sudden windstorms blasting down from the Gobi desert have made drought and famine constant possibilities. Today, the People's Republic budgets $60 to $90 million annually for its national Weather Modification Office. As for the return on this investment, the state-run news agency Xinhua claims that between 1999 and 2007, the office rendered 470,000 square kilometers of land hail-free and created more than 250 billion tons of rain--an amount sufficient to fill the Yellow River, China's second largest, four times over.