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).

45 Years of Lei Feng: Jeremiah at the Granite Studio is not a believer:

Anyway, in case you missed it, Lei Feng was a young soldier in the PLA whose selfless devotion to his brother troops, to the people, and especially to Mao Zedong and his country made him a role model for young Chinese. If you want to think of him as a cross between a boy scout, GI Joe, and "Opie" from the old Andy Griffith Show, go ahead I won’t stop you.

Also: previous stories about Lei Feng on Danwei.

Protests against new PX factory location: From Edward Cody in the Washington Post:

Violent protests erupted in several southern Chinese fishing towns after residents heard that a chemical factory rejected as environmentally dangerous by the nearby city of Xiamen would be built in their area instead, witnesses and other residents said Monday.

The protesters, who began their uprising peacefully Thursday, clashed repeatedly with baton-wielding police Friday and Saturday in several towns near the Gulei Peninsula, about 50 miles southwest of Xiamen on the Taiwan Strait, they said. A dozen people were injured and carried away for treatment in local hospitals, and about 15 were arrested, according to demonstrators and their family members.

ICBC seals deal with South African bank: South Africa's Business Day has details of ICBC's $5,6bn in Standard Bank. The deal has been completed, giving ICBC a 20% stake in Africa’s largest lender.

Super ministries!: In the The Financial Times Richard McGregor, who probably has the best Party sources of any Western journalist currently working in Beijing, reports:

China to launch revamp with merged ministries

China will launch a shake-up of government at the annual session of its top legislative body, with the formation of 'super-ministries' intended to streamline administration and reduce meddling by minor bureaucrats in state businesses.

The long-term structural reform of government will be discussed alongside more urgent tasks facing China’s leadership – in particular, the battle against inflation, now at an 11-year high.

Journal wins, then denied, media award: ESWN translates an account of Publicity Department intereference in an award that the newspaper Southern Weekly was to have presented to Yanhuang Chunqiu, a journal of history and politics:

Since the summer of 1989, when certain leaders of the Central Publicity Department went after certain units, they never issue official documents. They only make a notice by telephone. When you ask him who he is, he never says so. He gives the impression of stealthiness (maybe he is afraid, but what is he afraid of?). Usually, he only says that he is from a certain department within the Central Publicity Department.

Should Yanhuang Chunqiu have received this particular award? When this writer called Du Daozheng, he said that he did not care because the people know the truth and he does not want to argue over this. This particular award was based upon a popular vote with at least half of the official media persons voting for Yanhuang Chunqiu. Should public opinion be ignored and overridden so easily?

Can Chinese thinkers change the world?: Prospect magazine has published an article by Mark Leonard described thusly:

Despite the global interest in the rise of China, no one is paying much attention to its ideas and who produces them. Yet China has a surprisingly lively intellectual class whose ideas may prove a serious challenge to western liberal hegemony

An excerpt:

Chinese thinkers argue that all developed democracies are facing a political crisis: turnout in elections is falling, faith in political leaders has declined, parties are losing members and populism is on the rise. They study the ways that western leaders are going over the heads of political parties and pioneering new techniques to reach the people such as referendums, opinion surveys or 'citizens' juries.' The west still has multi-party elections as a central part of the political process, but has supplemented them with new types of deliberation. China, according to the new political thinkers, will do things the other way around: using elections in the margins but making public consultations, expert meetings and surveys a central part of decision-making.