CHINA: Yao Ming, Chinese multimillion- aire basketball star for the Houston Rockets, will be the latest name added to the pantheon of great Communist Party "model workers" - proletarian heroes one and all and shining examples for the glorious Chinese Revolution.
The giant athlete, who is adored in China, will receive the party's highest commendation as a "model and advanced worker" in a gala event in his native land ahead of the May Day festivities.
Since the 1949 revolution the highly prized award has been reserved for bona fide proletariats: bus conductors, coal miners and industrial workers who work hard and closely follow Marxist principles.
"I take it as one more honour and encouragement from my country," Yao (24) said. He was speaking through his agent Zhang Chi - Yao Ming is almost certainly the first recipient of the award to have an agent.
Somehow Yao doesn't really fit the image of toiling worker doing the bidding of Chairman Mao, but in the new China, talented NBA players and agents of international capital alike are also entitled to recognition for their toil.
For the first time this year, the awards will honour capitalists and migrant workers, although these two categories are said to make up a minority of the honour roll. "The reason we nominated Yao is that he shows the modern image of the Chinese while being patriotic in the international sports arena," one Shanghai government official said.
Yao Ming is staunchly patriotic. When he joined the National Basketball Association, he promised to give half his salary to the Chinese sports authorities. He also must be the tallest recipient of the award - his gangly 7ft 6in frame has won him many honours in his field, including NBA all-star three times.
And he is the highest-earning "model worker" - his salary is about €3.5 million a year and he is expected to earn about €60 million in the next few years endorsing everything from McDonald's to Visa.
As a model worker, he will join the likes of Iron Man Wang, an oil worker and builder who dug for oil with his bare hands and used his own body to mix cement, all the while fighting class enemies, revisionists and erroneous ideas.
Or what about Shi Chuanxiang, who spent 40 years unflinchingly shovelling waste from Beijing public toilets.
Yao Ming's nomination has caused some controversy on the streets of Beijing.
"It's unfair. It's just because he's a big star that he's been chosen - model workers should be a worker in a factory," said Wang Xiaoguang, a cashier in a telephone company.
But a colleague said this was too hard on the NBA star. "He's good for China's image and he's a great sportsman - and sport is a kind of labour. Just because he makes a lot of money doesn't mean he's not a worker," he said.