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).

Hitting hard with "soft power": China Media Project brings together a number of recent discussions on the idea of "soft power":

Since Hu's pronouncements came out last October, we've gotten a glimpse of what the above passage means — basically, more media commercialization under party control. It means the creation of bigger, more powerful, more consolidated Chinese media groups that do the party's bidding, an intensification of Hu's earlier policies of the "Three Closenesses" (三贴近) and "media strengthening" (做强做大).

It was no mere coincidence when GAPP minister Liu Binjie (柳斌杰) announced on October 17 that China would now allow "comprehensive listings" (of both business and editorial sides) by media companies and invite an infusion of capital from major state-owned enterprises. Nor was it a surprise when news followed on November 20 that Liaoning Publishing & Media Company Limited (辽宁出版传媒股份有限公司) had become the first Chinese media company to make a so-called "comprehensive listing."

Just in time for flu season: No more quarantine forms!: Adam Minter at Shanghai Scrap discusses how the authorities were finally able to junk those annoying forms:

In 2003, this was, all in all, a very good idea. And, had China decided to maintain the strict quarantine/inspection procedures that it instituted during SARS, that would have been justifiable: protecting China's population from imported disease is in the national interest, under any definition. But, no surprise, as SARS ebbed, so did the strict quarantine procedures, and eventually - say, within a year of SARS - those procedures had been reduced to the quarantine forms. Since then, everybody - including China’s health authorities - has realized that that the quarantine forms are silly. It was just a matter of finding the right excuse to get rid of them.

Why the Yilishen scandal was the perfect China story: What made the Yilishen ant farming story so interesting? Imagethief explains:

You simply could not make it up. Ten Hollywood screenwriters locked in a closet with a kilo of blow, a brick of twenty dollar bills, your sister and a cigar-smoking chimpanzee in boxer shorts wouldn't come up with this. Even if they weren't on strike. Only China comes up with this. And not only does China alone come up with this, but the story also nicely draws together all the threads of the modern, Chinese narrative and ties them into a pretty bow. Just look at what this story offers: Social Issues...Sex...Corruption...Mass incidents...Ants...The whole thing was harmonized

Citizen journalism for an unharmonious world: Chris at Eyes East comments on an Atlanta Journal-Constitution opinion piece that argues for industry oversight of "citizen journalism":

Before you start griping that blogs are going to take CNN down a peg (and I'm not griping about that at all), consider what it's like when your CNN is CCTV, when your AP is Xinhua. Remember the Chongqing Nail House? Or the PX plant in Xiamen? Not a whole lot of coverage there in China Daily.

Now think about countries that don't even have that much news. Heard much out of Africa lately?

When you actually want to find out in countries that aren't overflowing with media, that don't have 24-hour cable networks following Larry Craig into the bathroom and checking into where Hillary Clinton is getting her campaign money (as they should), places that only make headlines when they get wiped out by tsunamis, who else is out there?

China bails out Morgan Stanley: From The Wall Street Journal:

Beijing's plan to invest $5 billion in Morgan Stanley caps a milestone year for China's deal makers: For the first time, Chinese companies and the government bought more overseas than foreign buyers have invested in China.

Chinese buyers have spent $29.2 billion acquiring foreign companies so far this year, while investors from the rest of the world have bought $21.5 billion of Chinese companies, according to Thomson Financial.

The investment in Morgan Stanley will give state-run China Investment Corp. -- a sovereign-wealth fund, essentially the government's money pile -- as much as 9.9% of the Wall Street giant

It is the latest in a string of bailouts of financial giants by foreign investors as the firms struggle with souring mortgage-related investments. Indeed, yesterday Morgan Stanley reported a $9.4 billion write-down for its fiscal fourth quarter on its U.S. subprime and other mortgage investments...