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).

Government officials, big businesses and underworld gangsters: ESWN translates a blog post by Fu Jianfeng about organized crime targeting the wealthy in Tangshan:

I cannot forget the look of terror in the eyes of one of the middle-aged billionaires. As he looked at me, he grabbed my hand hysterically and screamed: "You are asking me why I need to run so far away before I dare to speak to you? You ask me why I am afraid? That's because he has guns. Do you know how many guns he owns?"

This middle-aged man was an iron mine owner in Tangshan city (Hebei province) with about 1 billion yuan in wealth. The local gangsters Yang Shukuan held a gun to his head and forced him to sign a contract to provide 60 million yuan in "aid." Afterwards, Yang drugged the man's wife and raped her. The wife took 30 million yuan from her husband and vanished without a trace. "Yang must have killed my wife. What is the use of my money? My family is broken." He was crying as he spoke. It was very sad.

Teddy bear teacher to come to China: Gillian Gibbons, the British teacher who was jailed in the Sudan for naming a classroom teddy bear "Mohammed," wants to come to China:

Gibbons says she now hopes to teach children in China and will take a new teddy bear, called Barnaby, for her new pupils.

"I've been to China on holiday before and loved it," Gibbons told Hello! magazine.

"Besides which, I know I'm the most notorious teacher in the world at the moment but I'm hoping that perhaps no one has heard of me there."

Gold futures market for China: The Financial Times reports:

Beijing on Friday approved the launch of China’s first gold futures contracts, with simulated trading on the Shanghai Futures Exchange set to begin on Wednesday.

The exchange is expected to begin selling real renminbi-denominated contracts soon after and is preparing for huge demand from the rapidly expanding number of Chinese producers and consumers.

PXit strategy: For CDT, Jonathan Ansfield reveals the jockeying that's been going on by major players in the Xiamen PX project:

After the forum, one CCTV news magazine program requested clips including sound to use in its coverage of the story two weekends ago, one director of the program tells this reporter. But Xiamen propaganda officials told him the city never aired talkie footage itself and could not provide him any. "He said they didn't really care [about the project] at this point, as long as they don't have to decide."

Now, this reporter is told, the relevant central government departments are orchestrating a face-saving compromise along with company and local government bosses.

Green for the Olympics, gray for the long term: In this installment of the New York Times' series on China's pollution problem, Jim Yardley addresses how Beijing is trying to clean up its air:

Beijing officials say the Olympics will have a lasting and positive environmental legacy on the city. International Olympic Committee officials acknowledge that air quality remains a problem, but they say the air would be far worse without improvements made for the Games. "The general trend is improvement," said Simon Balderstone, an environmental adviser for the I.O.C.

But pollution is expected to remain a major, long-term challenge as Beijing's population may eventually exceed 20 million people. Scientists also say the city will never be able to clean itself up if surrounding industrial provinces are not cleaned up, too.