Intrigue, betrayal at China’s top levels
Only a few people heard it, but when one of China’s most prominent politicians slapped his police chief across the face, it ended up reverberating far and wide. That smack unleashed tales of murder and conspiracy at the highest levels of China’s Communist Party — and eventually, the politician’s own undoing.
A day earlier, the chief had confronted Bo Xilai, the party boss of the megacity of Chongqing, with some unwelcome information: He had evidence Bo’s wife had killed a British businessman in China. Bo’s stinging rebuke sent the top cop fleeing into the arms of U.S. officials, creating the Communist Party’s most embarrassing scandal in decades.
Now the final chapter in the saga is about to unfold: a closely orchestrated trial, opening Thursday, in which 64-year-old Bo is virtually assured of being convicted of corruption and abuse of power.
Bo’s trial will seal the political demise of a charismatic figure who cultivated a following by mobilizing the masses and sending his critics to labour camps. His naked ambition may have led to his fall.
He had been a member of China’s 25-member Politburo, and had been considered a contender for one of the seven seats on the party’s allpowerful Politburo Standing Committee. Today, he is in many senses a nonentity. His own family has not seen him in 18 months.
“It’s dealing with a ghost, really. The guy has been absolutely annihilated,” said Kerry Brown, a former British diplomat in Beijing and China expert at University of Sydney.
The rising political star precipitated his downfall in January of 2012 by censuring his top aide, police chief Wang Lijun.
Spurned by his influential patron and fearing for his life, Wang slipped out of the city by car a week later and fled to the U.S. consulate in neighbouring Chengdu to seek asylum. He brought explosive allegations: murder by a city boss’s wife, a coverup and other high-level machinations.
“It felt like something out of a spy thriller,” U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke later said in Newsweek.
The Bo family was once — outwardly — a picture of success: a telegenic politician and his devoted wife, Gu Kailai, a corporate lawyer who gave up her job to help her husband’s ascent and raise their son.
In November 2011, Gu lured Heywood to a secluded hilltop retreat in Chongqing where she got him drunk and then, with an aide’s help, poured cyanide into his mouth. Then she turned to Wang, who sent police officers to remove evidence, including hotel surveillance videos.
Left out of the official account was a surprising twist that was exposed in court testimony: The police chief had helped Gu plot the murder.
On March 14, 2012, then-outgoing premier Wen Jiabao criticized Bo — without naming him — in a rare public rebuke of a party leader of that stature. Wen said Chongqing leaders “must seriously reflect on the Wang Lijun incident and learn lessons from it.” The next day, Bo was dismissed as Chongqing party boss.
Murder allegations against Bo’s wife emerged after his dismissal. She has been convicted of murder and given a suspended death sentence that may be reduced to life in prison.
Bo was stripped of further posts, including on the powerful Politburo. He now faces charges of interfering with the murder investigation, as well as bribery and embezzlement.
Bo Guagua, the couple’s son, said in a statement released to The New York Times that he has been denied contact with both parents for the past 18 months.
Bo Xilai’s trial is expected to be a short affair with a predetermined outcome: guilt.