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 coming China crash: This time it's really going to happen, says Martin Hutchinson at the Asia Times:

Bears on China have been common for the last decade, and their track record has not been good. To take just one unfair example, Henry Blodget, the former Internet genius, wrote in Slate in April 2005: "You've probably been daydreaming about the fortune to be made in Chinese stocks. Well, keep dreaming ... you'll eventually conclude that you could have done better selling insurance in Toledo." That was about six months before the Chinese market took off, and if anybody has made 500% on their investment by selling insurance in Toledo during that period, I haven't met him.

To see why a crash may be coming, it is worth examining the behavior of the China Investment Corporation, the US$200 billion sovereign wealth fund set up by the Chinese government in September. Now $200 billion is a fair chunk of cash; you could almost buy all but three US corporations with that (at today's prices, ExxonMobil, General Electric, Microsoft - there are four or five others including Google that barely top the bar.) Six weeks ago, the power of sovereign wealth funds was celebrated and China Investment's moves into the market were awaited with bated breath.

Well, so much for that. A third of China Investment's portfolio is to be invested in Central Huijin Investment Company, a purchaser of bad loans from the Chinese banks, and another third will recapitalize China Agricultural Bank and China Development Bank, to shape them up for privatization. About $3 billion of the fund was invested in the private equity manager Blackstone in May - that may have bought China useful political contacts, but it is now worth $2 billion. And the remainder is being invested very carefully, primarily in US Treasury securities - which are also losing money steadily in yuan terms.

More links at China Law Blog

China and Iran sign $2 billion oil deal: The Financial Times reports:

Iran signed a $2bn oil contract with Sinopec of China on Sunday, sending a signal to western companies that they might miss out on potentially lucrative contracts with one of the world's biggest energy exporters if they continued to heed US-inspired sanctions against Tehran.

'If other countries who like to invest in oil and gas hesitate, they will lose opportunities,' said Gholam-Hossein Nozari, Iran's oil minister.

Global Times defends Edwin Maher: Black and White Cat translates a reaction to the recent LATimes profile of Edwin Maher, an Australian who works as a CCTV news anchor:

As this reporter understands it, these so-called Western media figures simply don't understand Maher and they have never made any enquiries on this matter to CCTV. They see Chinese news through colored spectacles and their approach verges on bigotry. "Maher is absolutely not the kind of person they say he is," a senior media worker told the Global Times, expressing intense indignation at the unreasonable attacks from certain Western figures in this report. This person believes that Maher is someone in the media who deserves respect, both for his character and professional ability. This media worker dismisses the criticisms of these so-called Western media experts, "Do they understand Maher? Do they know the facts?"

See also: Zhongnanhai blog, "Edwin Maher controversy: which side is more balanced"

What Chinese people are saying about our blogs: At the Cup of Cha blog, Josh looks at how some English-language blogs on China are received on the Chinese language Internet.

Gas lines in China: Managing the Dragon addresses the price controls that have led to a fuel shortage:

A draft energy law, now being circulated, proposes a market-led pricing system which would allow refiners to adjust product prices according to supply and demand. As China continues to industrialize and demand for energy grows, the last thing the country needs is an energy policy which does not accurately reflect the cost of energy in today's markets. If passed, China's new energy law would be the first step toward an overall energy policy which China needs to address one of the major issues facing the country today–the continued availability of fuel to feed its growing economy.

A blow to citizen journalists: John Kennedy translates Zola's blog post describing his arrest and questioning by the police in Liaoning, where he had gone to check out the Yilishen ant farmer protests:

In a second blog post since his forced return earlier this week he talks of redirecting the space to focus more on blogger education, but also mentions some unfinished business related to his time in Shenyang.

It's not the specific type of violence he claims he encountered at the hands of police while in custody there, he seems to have brushed that off. Nor is it having been in custody for more than the legally allowed 24 hours or possibly having been turned in by the ant farmer he was trying to help. Zola, reminding readers of his rural socioeconomic background, wants back the USD160 he says security agents confiscated while he was being held; in this message to readers, he threatens to sue to get it back.