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).

Ministry fights back over 'rail chaos' slur: Government agencies slug it out over the Spring Festival transportation chaos. From the China Daily:

The Ministry of Railways on Tuesday responded to criticism from Guo Xiling, a member of the Guangzhou committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, over the improper handling of railways during the snow disaster that hit southern China last month.

Wang Yongping, a spokesman for the ministry, said in an interview on the website of the People's Daily that "all of Guo's accusations are groundless". Guo had said two government agencies should be blamed for the chaos at Guangzhou railway stations, the city's New Express reported on Monday.

More on China Media Project.

Apple takes an unfair beating on the iPhone: Paul Midler believes the huge market for smuggled iPhones proves that China Mobile was the big loser when its deal with Apple fell through:

Executives at China Mobile must be feeling pretty lousy at this point. The iPhone is a hit, and they had nothing to do with it. And for a company that is convinced its competitive advantage has something to do with its role as gatekeeper, we now have evidence to suggest that they don’t control anything.

See also: A Modern Lei Feng responds.

Hunan booze companies object to lunch-time drinking bans: The China Daily reports:

Alcohol producers in Henan province have retained a lawyer to appeal a controversial government document that bans officials from drinking alcohol at lunch during work days.

Kang Yinzhong, a lawyer retained by the Henan Alcohol Association, said that drinking was a private affair and holding public office shouldn't keep someone from consuming alcohol as long as it did not affect their work.

The ban began in January 2007 in Xinyang City, Henan Province. Soon, other cities in the central province such as Shangqiu, Kaifeng and Luohe followed suit. Local restaurants, which get a big part of their business from alcohol sales, saw fewer lunch customers and less revenue as a result of the ban.

Fear of China stops $2 billion deal for 3Com: The Financial Times reports:

Bain Capital and its minority Chinese partner, Huawei Technologies, have shelved their $2.2bn deal to acquire 3Com, a US computer networking company, saying a key Washington committee charged with vetting foreign investments in sensitive sectors had told Bain it would not approve the purchase.

The setback to the deal highlights rising protectionist sentiment in the US as both Democrats and Republicans seek to woo an American electorate suspicious of foreign investment and the effects of globalisation on domestic jobs.

Online game industry deals paralyzed: The Economic Observer reports on overvaluation in the online gaming arena:

Ye Youzhong, CEO of Kaixin Investments, said that online game companies had recently overvalued themselves by over tenfold, making investments in them unprofitable when considering that the current price-to-earnings ratio of listed Chinese gaming companies is around 30. He said that if bought for a price of 12-15 times their real value, it would take a full three years--including the market listing process--before the investing company saw any profit. Moreover, he added, a lot of these companies had no chance to be listed in the first place.