Peter Mckay
THERE’S an Oriental proverb: ‘ Do good, reap good; do evil, reap evil.’ Is it applicable in the case of British businessman Neil Heywood, 41, allegedly poisoned with potassium cyanide after befriending powerful Chinese politician Bo Xilai and his wife, Gu Kailai?
He helped arrange for their son, Bo Guanga, to be educated in Britain. That was good. But we are also told Heywood helped Mrs Gu — with whom he allegedly had an affair — siphon £800 million into foreign bank accounts in her name. That’s not so good.
Mrs Gu is now accused of his murder and her husband, Bo, has been ejected from the ruling politburo.
According to Chinese websites, Mrs Gu asked Heywood to swear allegiance to her family and divorce his Chinese wife, Wang lulu. He refused, and — apparently fearing for his life — planned to return with his family to Britain.
A fantastic, stranger-than-fiction story? Or, an all-too-familiar human tale of sex, money and jealousy?
Tory premier Harold Macmillan once remarked drily to an aide after being told a respectable bank manager had been stopped by police with the body of his wife in the car boot: ‘It could happen to any of us, dear boy.’
We sometimes like to pretend that people who kill for reasons of sexual passion, or greed, inhabit a different moral universe; that they are not like us. We absorb the details of their crimes as if they were some gripping novel. In truth, though, it usually all comes down to the pursuit of power, money or sex.
We are entitled to expect our diplomats to investigate the Heywood/gu story and help the businessman’s wife and children re-locate to the UK, if that is what they wish.
But we can also expect the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s finest to drag their feet if their inquiries seem likely to upset Chinese state officials. The foot-dragging began on the day of Heywood’s death last November. It was three months before they began asking questions about his lonely demise in a hotel room. One diplomat is said to have attended his cremation, which conveniently destroyed evidence about how he had died.
Heywood’s widow was pressurised into agreeing to the cremation without a post mortem — and to the official story that he’d died of a heart attack after excessive drinking.
Why our official wariness? We’re frightened of upsetting the Chinese because of their great wealth. And they’re limbering up for one of their once-in- every- decade elections to the ruling Politburo Standing Committee. We can’t be seen to be interfering in that sacred process.
UNTIL Heywood’s mysterious death, Bo Xilai hoped to get China’s top job. Now his wife faces prosecution and a possible death sentence. As does Bo if he’s implicated in the murder. Meaning others are struggling to occupy the vacuum he leaves.
The story contradicts the rosy picture we’ve come to accept of China’s burgeoning growth, producing a billion-plus new customers for our branded goods. And of the idea that — with capitalism in crisis — it might have fashioned a user-friendly brand of communism that actually works.
There is political corruption there on a fantastic scale, making our own donors’ bungs and parliamentary expense fiddles seem like petty larceny. And, thanks to the internet, it’s becoming known to the dirt-poor, toiling masses.
Frantic efforts are being made to clamp down on any information about unrest. Peasants are revolting over their noses being rubbed in the dirt by wealthy party bosses and their associates. News leaks out of brutal police suppression in the interior.
More than 1,000 people have been arrested and 3,177 websites shut down in an internet crackdown called ‘Spring Breeze’ which — say state officials — is aimed at ‘cleansing cyberspace’. Over 200,000 ‘harmful’ online messages have been deleted, and some internet companies shut down altogether.
The strange death of Neil Heywood, a graduate in international relations who went to China to learn Mandarin, focuses our attention on this vast, mysterious state. We learn far more about the reality of life there from the crime than from promotional visits by our fawning politicos. Mainly that those who run China might be prone to the same human hunger for power, money and sex that afflicts us in the West.
I began with a Chinese proverb and end with a saying by Mahatma Gandhi: ‘Seven blunders of the world that lead to violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principle.’