The Bo Xilai Affair

[Count Bobulescu]

This is old news by now and I’m surprised no-one here has posted anything about it so far. I thought I’d start this thread at this late stage because this thing is beginning to look like it isn’t going away anytime soon. Given the UK connection I assume most are up to date, so I’ll just post a few links without comment and see where it goes. I’m goin all WaPo simply because it’s easiest. Oldest first.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...ZhS_story.html

BEIJING — Until a week ago, few Chinese had ever heard of Neil Heywood, and fewer still raised any questions when the 41-year-old British business consultant was found dead in his hotel room. Today, he is so famous — and such a sensitive topic — that China’s Internet censors have banned searches of Heywood’s Chinese name, Hai Wu De.
Such is the insatiable appetite of tens of millions of Chinese for news — no matter how tangential or speculative — about the country’s biggest political drama in two decades that “Heywood” has joined “tanks,” “military coup” and a host of other search terms now proscribed by the ruling Communist Party as it struggles to calm a national spasm of jitters.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...HnS_story.html

BEIJING — After weeks of Internet-fueled rumors suggesting fissures in the top leadership ranks, Chinese authorities struck back this weekend, closing 16 Web sites and arresting at least six people in a broad crackdown on the freewheeling world of cyberspace.
Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, said in a dispatch late Friday that the Web sites were closed, and the unnamed individuals detained, for “fabricating or disseminating online rumors.” For the past two weeks, the Internet has been filled with rumors of an internal power struggle after the largely unexplained March 15 ouster of the popular provincial Communist Party chief Bo Xilai.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...L8S_story.html

BEIJING — Bo Xilai, the charismatic Communist Party chieftain who built a popular following and seemed destined for one of China’s top leadership jobs, was unceremoniously stripped Tuesday of his remaining party posts, and his wife was arrested on suspicion of homicide. The widening scandal involves business quarrels, a flight to an American diplomatic outpost and the alleged murder of an expatriate British businessman.
In the secretive world of Chinese elite politics, Bo’s downfall in the space of just two months has been nothing short of spectacular. As of Tuesday night, Bo — the scion of one of China’s revolutionary veterans — was the subject of an investigation for “serious discipline violations,” according to a terse official dispatch.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...CAT_story.html

CHONGQING, China — Scandal-ridden politician Bo Xilai, the most senior Chinese leader to fall from power in years, remained popular even as the machinery of the all-powerful Communist Party bore down on him.
In parks and plazas across Chongqing, the inland megacity he ran the past four years, people praised him as recently as last week for his boldness in creating jobs and busting organized crime. They dismissed any excesses as no different from those of other politicians.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...FAT_story.html

BEIJING — China’s Communist Party machine sought Wednesday to stave off criticism of the ouster of disgraced politician Bo Xilai and the arrest of his wife in a murder probe, coordinating an official chorus of approval and moving to suppress Internet references to the matter.
Editorials and official commentaries in the state-run news media said the decision to dismiss the former Chongqing party chief from his remaining posts showed that the party respects the rule of law. In the capital, party members and officials announced their unanimous support for the decision, according to the Beijing News. And the evening news broadcast on state-run CCTV featured interviews with party officials, academics and ordinary people from across the country, all lauding Bo’s removal.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...zET_story.html

BEIJING — Chinese senior military officers and commissars joined the Communist Party’s vast propaganda machine Friday in a flood of calls for unity following the purge of the disgraced politician Bo Xilai and the arrest of his wife on murder charges.
The unusual pleas from the political leadership of the People’s Liberation Army seemed designed to counter persistent rumors of splits within the ranks over Bo’s ouster, and to dampen speculation that the charismatic Bo — the son of a revolutionary hero — still has residual support in the military. But the intensity of the barrage raised as many questions as it answered.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...aFT_story.html

HONG KONG — With China’s propaganda apparatus in overdrive as the Communist Party demolishes the reputation of one of its former stars, a few defiant and angry fans are sticking to their guns.
“We support the Chongqing Model and Bo Xilai,” declared a call to arms posted on the Web site of the Progress Society, a pugnacious “new left” fraternity that trumpets the ousted Chongqing Party boss as a hero. Its logo features a panda wearing a Mao cap and clutching a rifle in front of a Chinese flag.

James Fallows has lived in China on and off for twenty years and will be worth reading when he has something to say.

http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...-xilai/255902/

A number of people have written in to ask why I haven't put up anything extensive, or at all, on the roiling controversy surrounding former Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai, his wife (and now murder suspect) Gu Kailai, the British businessman and apparent murder victim Neil Heywood, Bo's former police chief and "anti-corruption" ally Wang Lijun, and the rest of the cast in the drama unfolding minute by minute in Chongqing, Beijing, and elsewhere.

Is it because I consider it unimportant? Obviously on the contrary. This is the biggest political drama in China at least since the Tiananmen crackdowns of 1989, with ramifications no one can confidently predict. It's precisely because it's so important that I have not wanted to say anything until I knew something worth saying. For the moment, here is an Atlantic Wire item with leads to other stories. I will try to do a more comprehensive roundup soon, since so much good work is being done by so many analysts inside and outside China

.

[morticia]

I find this one a bit weird; what on earth was the motive?? And why is Bo Xilai being dumped for the sins of his wife; or do they reckon both were involved? I understand Heywood was cremated asap, so how do they prove anything anyway?

Very weird....

[Hapax]

There's no doubt this is a major story, but it's very difficult to read the signs without a fairly good understanding of the internal dynamics of the Chinese political system, or enough grasp of the language to follow the local media, official and unofficial.

[quote]I’ll just post a few links without comment and see where it goes{/quote]

That's as comprehensive a gathering of sources as I can imagine at present from western sources. Thanks, CB!

I see a new slant on the story today:

There are unconfirmed rumours that a British businessman thought to have been murdered in China was poisoned. The allegation appears to have come from a report on a Chinese-language website based outside the country. The Chinese authorities have made no comment on the rumours.

The Chinese government has tried to downplay the connection between Mr Heywood's death and the political changes place in Beijing.

A commentary piece published by the state-run Xinhua news agency on Sunday said the death is being handled normally and should be treated without "fuss, not to mention excessive interpretation or bias".

"It has nothing to do with a so-called 'political struggle'," it went on.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-17719621

Hmmmm. Of course not.

I assume there will be a very high-profile (show-) trial coming up soon, but I'm sure a lot more information and disinformation will surface before then. I wonder what other prominent figures will be implicated. Given the fondness of the current Chinese for capital punishment, that must be on the cards too.

[Yojimbo]

I think the reason for the lack of discussion is, quite simply, that its so difficult to understand what exactly is going on.

There seems little doubt but that there has been a long term plot by senior CCP officials to nail Bo. These things don't happen suddenly in China, the moves to get rid of him would not have happened unless senior politburo members were certain that he had been isolated politically and so could be safely jettisoned.

But the issue of the dead Briton is particularly perplexing. Some writers seem to think its a set up, but that doesn't make any sense - if they decided to set up his wife for a murder, they would not have used a foreigners death, too risky to involve another countries government.

The other great unknown is why on earth Bo's head of police ran to a US consulate for help. That was either extraordinarily stupid, or it indicates that he was certain he was to be killed if he didn't do something drastic.

I think, using Occams Razor, the most likely explanation is that a lot of powerful people were gathering up information to use against Bo, but things got out of control, with various people, including the Chief of Police and the English businessman finding out far too much (it seems this guy may have been something of a conduit for dodgy money for Bo - he seems to have been looking after Bo's son when he was studying in British schools which should have been out of the financial reach of a humble public official). I would suspect that Bo and his wife were up to a lot of no good, and when it looked like things were running out of control, they overstepped the mark and tried to remove witnesses. This was precisely what the Politburo were waiting for, and they stepped in. If it all sounds Soprano-ish, well, thats Chinese politics for you.

Incidentally, things aren't helped by Western reporters confusion over Bo's politics. His association with self proclaimed Maoist groups should not be interpreted as indicating he was a leftist extremist. Lots of political groups in China portray themselves as Maoists in order to protect themselves from accusations of treachery. A bit like Americans always wrapping the flag about themselves before making any political statements outside the cosy consensus. Bo seemed to have been very much a populist nationalist without any particular ideological attachment apart from his own ambition.

[Count Bobulescu]

The money is spilling out of the jar.


http://www.todayonline.com/Hotnews/E...million-empire

BEIJING - The sisters of Gu Kailai - who is suspected of murdering a United Kingdom citizen and is the wife of disgraced Chinese official Bo Xilai - controlled a web of businesses from Beijing to Hong Kong to the Caribbean worth at least US$126 million (S$157 million), regulatory and corporate filings show.

Gu Kailai, 53, was the youngest of five daughters of a People's Liberation Army general, according to a Chinese-language website affiliated with the Communist Youth League. She rose from being a butcher's assistant during the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution to become a lawyer who argued cases in the United States.

Now China says she is suspected of murdering businessman Neil Heywood in November, and her husband this week was suspended from the Communist Party's elite Politburo.

Her sisters focused on business rather than politics. Gu Wangjiang, 64, the oldest, is a Hong Kong national who owns S$114 million in shares of an eastern China printing company, according to a Shenzhen exchange filing tracked by Bloomberg.

Ms Gu Wangjiang and her sister, Ms Gu Wangning, serve as directors of several other companies, including some that Hong Kong records trace to the British Virgin Islands. They also have made millions selling Hong Kong real estate.

Another sister, Ms Gu Zhengxie, 62, was a top official at one of the country's biggest state-owned companies.

Their wealth - and the fact they put some assets offshore where ownership is harder to trace - illustrate how the politically connected thrive in China, a country where Mr Bo himself last month warned of the dangers of a rising wealth gap.

Bo’s Son on the Run?


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...438913376.html

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—The son of Bo Xilai, the sacked Chinese Communist Party official at the center of the country's biggest political crisis in a generation, appears to have left his apartment near Harvard University, escorted by private security guards, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Bo Guagua, 24 years old and a postgraduate student at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, didn't normally have a security detail. He was no longer in his upscale apartment in a modern seven-story building in Cambridge, a concierge working there said on Saturday. He left in recent days, but it wasn't clear where he had gone, how long he was expected to be gone, or whether he planned to return to classes this week.

The concierge said staff at the building, which features a sun deck and a gym, had been told not to answer questions about the matter; she didn't say by whom. Apartments like Mr. Bo's typically rent for about $2,950 a month, according to rental websites.

The younger Mr. Bo is the most prominent of the younger members of a group known in China as "princelings", who are widely resented because of the privileges they enjoy as the descendants of revolution-era heroes and their often-extravagant lifestyles. Before the scandal, the Bo family was regarded as one of the most prestigious in the party elite. The couple's relatives have broad business connections in China and Hong Kong, where many members of China's elite do business.

[Count Bobulescu]

Here’s the James Fallows article round up referenced in the OP. have not read the underlying yet.
http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...oundup/255936/


The Atlantic's own Helen Gao has a very interesting look of the interplay among rumor, fantasy, official "fact," and forced revisions to those facts, in the riveting Bo Xilai drama in China. Part of her story is based on following Chinese social media feeds, including this message from Weibo, the counterpart to Twitter:


Reuters has an attention-getting story today on this topic. It's an answer to this question: If Bo Xilai's wife really did order the killing of a British businessman (as she has now been accused of), why on Earth would she have done that? Here's the Reuters headline. Thanks to Clement Tan, formerly of the Atlantic, for the lead.

[Yojimbo]

The Reuters story does sound quite credible. Even the marriage details ring true - a lot of Chinese power couples are based on business rather than love, so its not uncommon for Chinese wives to have close relations with someone outside her husbands direct circle - if its convenient for the husband, everyone turns a blind eye to it.

Another issue is that powerful, rich Chinese love to have a connection outside China - a relation or trusted confidant - its always useful to have a semi-legitimate reason to have business relations in a western country which can double up as a way of hiding corrupt gains, not to mention having a bolthole to escape to.

It does indicate though what will happen if the Chinese system starts to rock. A hell of a lot of rich, powerful people will leave very quickly, with all their moveable cash. This is what Keynesians might call a pro-cyclical force which could make a downturn get very nasty.

[Count Bobulescu]

It does indicate though what will happen if the Chinese system starts to rock. A hell of a lot of rich, powerful people will leave very quickly, with all their moveable cash. This is what Keynesians might call a pro-cyclical force which could make a downturn get very nasty.

And I have the feeling that with all the various warning signs over the last two years there has been a lot of that going on for some time.

[Yojimbo]

And I have the feeling that with all the various warning signs over the last two years there has been a lot of that going on for some time.

The Chinese are among the biggest purchasers of property on the east and west coasts of the US, plus in London and Switzerland. Much of it goes unnoticed because so much of it is via agents or through family members who are European/US citizens.

[Count Bobulescu]

The Chinese are among the biggest purchasers of property on the east and west coasts of the US, plus in London and Switzerland. Much of it goes unnoticed because so much of it is via agents or through family members who are European/US citizens.

The most expensive residential property sold in Wash DC in 2011was bought by a young Chinese "tech" couple who have been accumulating such trophies at bargain prices in the last few years. The 2011 purchase was for $21M down down from an initial asking of $49M in 2008.

[Count Bobulescu]

Bo Xilai reportedly blocked murder investigation of wife

Top news: More details are coming to light in the murder and corruption scandal that has rocked China's ruling elite. Reuters is reporting that former Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai had allowed and then tried to block an official investigation into allegations that his wife was behind the murder of a British businessman. Neil Heywood, who was found dead on Nov. 15 and is now believed to have been poisoned, had allegedly been threatening to expose a plan by Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, to move money out of the country.
Bo's police chief, Wang Lijun, reportedly confronted Bo with evidence of Gu's involvement on Jan. 18 and was first allowed to proceed with his investigation before Bo quashed it several days later. Wang apparently attempted to seek asylum at the U.S. consulate on Feb. 6 before being arrested.
Gu and Wang are currently in custody while Bo has not been seen in public since March. The scandal involving Bo, once seen as a shoe-in for a senior party leadership post, has exposed what some observers have called the largest rift within the party since Tiananmen Square. While not mentioning Bo specifically, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao called corruption the greatest threat to the party in an interview with a respected political journal this week.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has promised to raise the issue of Heywood's death in a meeting with a senior Chinese official at Downing Street this week. Chinese officials initially said that Heywood, who had lived in China for 10 years, died as a result of excessive alcohol consumption, an explanation accepted by the British embassy and his family. The British government has reportedly decided to allow Heywood's Chinese widow to enter the country if she wishes.
Scrutiny has also fallen on Bo's son Bo Guagua, a Harvard student whose flamboyant lifestyle has reportedly irritated party leaders.

[Count Bobulescu]

Bret Stephens in The Wall Street Journal on Bo Xilai and China's rise The intrigue that took down Bo Xilai, Communist party chief of Chongqing, and made his wife a murder suspect, shouldn't have caused such a ripple in the nation's political stability. But rumors of a coup and threats of another Cultural Revolution have abounded in the weeks since the affair erupted. "[T]he scandal wouldn't resonate among Chinese if it were an isolated case. In reality it's the norm." The preferred explanation -- that it's a face off between Bo's "leftism" and the party's orthodoxy -- doesn't hold, Stephens argues. Instead, he says, the Chinese are enraged by the way their political leaders run cities like fiefdoms and the lack of accountability in their form of government. This affair has big implications for China's future. "This is not a country on its way to global supremacy. The Bo scandal may pass soon enough, but what it has revealed will prove increasingly difficult to ignore."

[Count Bobulescu]

Now for the straight dope on Bo we turn to CCTV News to learn:

http://english.cntv.cn/program/china...8/107373.shtml

It’s been a few days since former Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai was removed from his other positions. The move has received firm support from the whole party and the public. The scandal has put Chongqing under the spotlight, but after a day's work, people there continue to enjoy themselves as usual.
After sundown, it’s time for fun in Chongqing. Local snacks, dance groups and night shopping bring the city alive in the evening hours. There’s something for everybody, no matter what age.
Jia Qiongyun, Chongqing resident, said, "We’ve organized these dancing hours for many years. Every day we come here at 7 o’clock and leave around 10. Most of the dancers are retired local residents.

[Count Bobulescu]

More on Bo.
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/18/150859...cc=nh-20120418

Heywood was murdered for threatening to expose plans to transfer money overseas, according to a leak from the official Chinese investigation reported by Reuters. Lurid rumors of cyanide and poisoned drinks have been flying around China's Internet. But none of it — even the most sensational allegations — comes as a surprise to Chinese journalist Jiang Weiping. He worked for the state-run media in Hong Kong, but spent five years in prison and another three effectively under house arrest after using a pseudonym to report on the Bo family's corruption. He now lives in Canada.
In a telephone interview with NPR, Jiang described how Bo and his wife operated back in the late 1980s. Bo was running Dalian's propaganda office, which oversaw cultural affairs. His wife, who is also a lawyer, started the Folk Customs Culture Research Institute.

[Count Bobulescu]

After Bo’s departure the families of thousands he locked up are seeking justice. His reach went both deep and wide.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/after-...y.html?hpid=z1

BEIJING — The dramatic ouster of Bo Xilai as Communist Party chief in Chongqing has prompted an outpouring from people who say their relatives were wrongly jailed under his rule and want the government to reopen their cases.
More than 4,000 people were jailed during an aggressive anti-crime campaign that Bo launched in late 2007. While Bo insisted that he was cracking down on gangsters and lawlessness, critics say he led a brutal effort designed to punish rivals and squeeze money from local businesses.

How the government handles the myriad cases and the mounting evidence of wrongdoing poses yet another test for a Chinese leadership that is anxious to contain the growing scandal, but that also claims to be publicly committed to upholding the rule of law.

One way for officials to show they really are concerned with the law, critics say, would be to reopen all the criminal cases in Chong-qing under Bo’s nearly five-year tenure, and not just investigate the case of the deceased Briton.
So far, however, China’s Communist authorities have shown no desire to revisit the anti-crime campaign and the cases of thousands still imprisoned.