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).

New regulations to send Chinese vid sharing down the tubes?: At Ogilvy's Digital Watch blog, Kaiser Kuo comments on what MII has in store for 2008, specifically, new regulations that may keep online video in the hands of state-owned or state-controlled companies:

I rang my friend Victor Koo, former president of Sohu.com and founder and CEO of one of the leading Chinese video sharing sites Youku.com, who told me that this doesn't actually represent a change in policy: "It's really just a formalization of the implementation and application process," he says. "We've already been submitting various information they've asked us for about our legal structure, and about how we operate. From an operational standpoint it doesn't make a difference, but from a regulatory perspective it's going to be similar to when the portals listed."

The Chinese report is from the Oriental Morning Post. There is also an article about it by Interfax. Below are various Danwei articles from 2006 about regulatory rumblings.

• SARFT clamps down on "online TV stations"
• Online video tainted by spoofs
• Illegal power
• The General Administration of Anxiety about Radio, Film and TV
• SARFT attacks Internet video

Danone/Wahaha: both parties agree to truce: Managing the Dragon takes a look at the circumstances surrounding Wahaha's and Danone's return to the negotiating table:

What caused Danone's change in attitude? One of two events, or a combination of the two, was most likely behind Danone's decision.

First, when President Sarkozy of France brought up the Danone/Wahaha dispute with President Hu of China in their recent presidential dinner in Beijing, President Hu undoubtedly told him that there was little he or any Chinese official could do as long as the two parties are embroiled in legal proceedings....

Secondly, Danone may have been somewhat unsettled by the recent court decisions that went against the company in China. While Danone has claimed that it was winning in lawsuits outside China, that is not where the real issues lie. Danone's legal actions in the U.S. were designed to gain leverage on the Chinese partner by going after assets that Wahaha or Mr. Zong may have outside China, but they would have done nothing to settle the central causes of the dispute which are in China.

China Daily clarification: Yesterday, China Daily published a report on "mega departments" that included the following claim, ascribed to Zheng Xinli, deputy chief of the party's Central Policy Research Offic: "the regulatory commissions on securities, banking and insurance that make up the financial regulation system will be merged into one mega department." The story was the top headline on the paper's website yesterday, but it has since been removed (it's still available on Sina) and replaced with a "clarification":

The third paragraph of Thursday's page 1 report, "Mega departments to help improve efficiency", should have read: Zheng also said the government is considering setting up a mega department in the financial sector without giving any details.

Thanks to Reid Barrett for the tip. See also: A curious correction.

Japanese PM in Beijing for the weekend: Xinhua reports that Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda arrived yesterday in Beijing for a four-day visit, which the State-owned news agency says us 'widely portrayed as a trip to warm up ties'.

Christmas Eve at Nankai: On the campus of Nankai University on 24 December, a Buick brushed up against a student riding a bike and received a scratch to the paint. The driver demanded that the bicyclist pay compensation, and began to berate her with increasing fervor as a crowd gathered. Then things got rough. Bob Chen at Global Voices Online describes what happened and presents photos of the scene taken by witnesses.


Also at ESWN.