A flamboyant and telegenic politician who until recently seemed destined for the top ranks of China’s leadership was stripped of his most powerful posts on Tuesday and his wife named in the murder of a British businessman as Chinese leaders moved to stem a scandal that has exposed divisive infighting.
The announcement that Bo Xilai was being suspended from the Communist Party’s Politburo and Central Committee and that his wife was a suspect in a homicide investigation put an end to a colorful political career. Media-savvy with a populist flair, Bo gained a nationwide following for busting organized crime and for reviving communist culture while running the inland mega-city of Chongqing.
Espionage, crime, cult of the the popular and Chinese power politics. This story has it all: ~graham
Washington Post, By Andrew Higgins, April 13
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.
Bo, who until just a few weeks ago had a shot at joining the supremely powerful nine-member Politburo Standing Committee, has now been stripped of all his posts and is under investigation for “serious violations of discipline†while his wife is in detention on suspicion of murdering a British business consultant.
China’s new left is a disparate, volatile force, united only by a vague sense that the country has taken a wrong turn by pursuing economic growth above all else. Members range from nationalist firebrands and prominent intellectuals to discontented princelings, such as Hu Yingmu, the elderly daughter of Mao Zedong’s longtime secretary.
“The real concern in Beijing is that the links here are unpredictable, difficult to gauge and largely underground,†said Patricia Thornton, a scholar of Chinese politics at the University of Oxford. The jittery mood in Beijing, heightened by unfounded recent rumors of a coup, gives the new left “more heft than it would otherwise have in normal times and contributes greatly to sense of uncertainty as the next transition looms†at the Party’s 18th Congress later this year.
China shutters websites, deletes 210,000 posts over ‘rumors’
AFP, April 13
Beijing – China has closed 42 websites and deleted more than 210,000 posts since mid-March in a crackdown on online “rumoursâ€, state media said Thursday, as a major political scandal rocked the country.
The announcement on the official Xinhua news agency came as Chinese authorities ramped up efforts to control online speculation about the purge of a top leader whose wife is suspected in the murder of a British businessman.
It did not refer to this week’s dramatic developments surrounding the high-profile and populist former leader Bo Xilai, who was sacked as Chongqing party secretary last month.
But China’s weibos — microblogs similar to Twitter that have taken the country by storm — have buzzed with speculation about Bo’s suspension from the powerful 25-member Politburo and the investigation of his wife for murder.
“Actions of creating and spreading rumours via the Internet disrupt public order and undermine social stability, and will never be tolerated,†the report quoted Liu Zhengrong, an official with the State Internet Information Office, which controls the web, as saying.
Previously: China’s incoming supreme leader in call for purity as top party cadre fired
Exclusive: Briton killed after threat to expose Chinese leader’s wife: sources
Reuters, By Chris Buckley, April 16
CHONGQING, China – The British businessman whose murder has sparked political upheaval in China was poisoned after he threatened to expose a plan by a Chinese leader’s wife to move money abroad, two sources with knowledge of the police investigation said.
It was the first time a specific motive has been revealed for Neil Heywood’s murder last November, a death which ended Chinese leader Bo Xilai’s hopes of emerging as a top central leader and threw off balance the Communist Party’s looming leadership succession.
Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, asked Heywood late last year to move a large sum of money abroad, and she became outraged when he demanded a larger cut of the money than she had expected due to the size of the transaction, the sources said.
She accused him of being greedy and hatched a plan to kill him after he said he could expose her dealings, one of the sources said, summarizing the police case. Both sources have spoken to investigators in Chongqing, the southwestern Chinese city where Heywood was killed and where Bo had cast himself as a crime-fighting Communist Party leader.
[...]
The sources said Gu and Heywood, who had lived in China since the early 1990s, shared a long and close personal relationship, but were not romantically involved.
BBC, April 20
A senior Chinese journalist has told the BBC that police knew UK man Neil Heywood had been murdered in Chongqing last November and that a cover-up began immediately.
Police panicked when they realised the case could be linked to top politician Bo Xilai and his wife, Gu Kailai.
It was only this month that authorities promised an investigation and named Ms Gu as a suspect.
Bo Xilai has been sacked, amid China’s biggest political scandal in decades.
[...]
”They were terrified of the politician,” Mr Han said.
It was at this point that former Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun became involved. In January, Mr Wang told his boss Mr Bo that he believed Ms Gu was involved in the murder.
”Bo Xilai was shocked when he heard the details,” Mr Han said. ”He started sweating profusely.”
BBC, By Michael Bristow, April 20
Beijing – The Chinese politician who launched an attack on organised crime is accused of heading a police apparatus that carried out “evil” operations against its enemies.
Bo Xilai spearheaded a crackdown on Chongqing’s mafia organisations, but people are now coming forward claiming this involved torture and false accusations.
These allegations have emerged since Mr Bo was stripped of his political roles for serious violations of communist party discipline.
These violations are linked to the death of the British businessman Neil Heywood, who was found dead in a hotel room in Chongqing last November.
In Bo Xilai scandal, China’s national leaders fear their undoing
McClatchy, By Tom Lasseter, April 20
CHONGQING, China – On the day that former Chongqing boss Bo Xilai was removed from all his Chinese Communist Party posts and his wife announced to be a murder suspect, a mob of at least 10,000 people took over the streets of one of the municipality’s distant districts.
The crowds hurled rocks at security officers and smashed or set fire to more than a dozen police cars before reinforcements arrived to lock things down.
The chaos was not sparked by Bo’s dismissal. Instead, public anger had exploded about reductions in medical insurance and social security after the merger of two of Chongqing’s districts.
The rioting of April 10 and 11, however, provided a stark reminder of the peril the Communist Party confronts as the scandal surrounding Bo grows ever deeper.
Many Chinese already have little or no trust in local officials and their allies, who they often believe are corrupt, venal and, at times, murderous. Should they come to believe the same about national figures, then the careful dance that takes place whenever there is unrest in China _ people pinning hopes on intervention from the central government _ could lose its footing.
In a nation known for reliance on police state tactics, it’s difficult to predict what might follow.
Analysis: Did U.S. fumble chance to peer inside China’s secretive leadership?
By Mark Hosenball
WASHINGTON | Sat Apr 21, 2012 12:33pm EDT
(Reuters) – Information about a Chinese policeman who implicated the wife of a top Chinese official in a British businessman’s murder was not circulated widely in Washington as he was considered of marginal intelligence value, current and former U.S. officials said.
In the weeks since Wang Lijun’s visit to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu and his subsequent detention, some critics of the Obama administration have accused it of fumbling what could have been one of the highest-level defectors ever from inside China’s clannish leadership class.
Part of that criticism is based on a story line that upon reaching the consulate in Chengdu on February 6, Wang requested political asylum.
The administration’s public line has been that Wang did not request asylum and left the consulate of his own accord.
However, some officials suggest that at some point, Wang at least may have hinted at a desire for asylum. And some U.S. officials say consultations were held at a high level in Washington before Wang left the consulate and surrendered to what he believed were friendly central government officials.
U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials said U.S. agencies were initially skeptical of Wang’s stories and that one of his most sensational claims, involving an alleged murder, was not circulated in Washington to officials normally briefed on such information.
“We were not told about the murder (allegations) until much later,” after stories describing Wang Lijun’s visit to the consulate surfaced in the media, one U.S. official told Reuters.
This official and others said agencies in Washington dealing with the Wang case concluded that while intriguing, it was primarily a local sideshow involving individuals, including Wang himself, of questionable character and credibility.
LESS THAN A ‘TREASURE TROVE’
Their bottom-line assessment was that the revelations from Wang, who had served as police chief and deputy mayor of Chongqing, another major provincial metropolis about 300 km (188 miles) from Chengdu, were less than the “treasure trove” media reports have described.
And while Wang’s scandalous allegations surfaced just as China’s Communist Party was preparing to anoint a new generation of leaders – including one of the principal targets of his claims – Washington concluded that they did not seriously threaten the party’s control over the country.
Hence little consideration was given during Wang’s 24-hour visit to the consulate to offering him U.S. government protection or secreting him out of the country.
Wang’s allegations, directed principally against populist Chongqing party leader Bo Xilai and his wife, Gu Kailai, ruined Bo’s hopes of ascending to the party’s highest ruling body, a subcommittee of the Politburo.
However, according to U.S. intelligence assessments, while China’s Communist Party faces traditional factional tensions, the long-term political fallout of Bo’s downfall will be limited and there is little similarity with the upheaval that shook China during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
“From the U.S. government’s point of view, what is the upside of getting involved in this?” said Brookings Institution scholar Kenneth Lieberthal, a former senior adviser on Asia to former Democratic President Bill Clinton.
U.S. officials said there were other reasons officers at the consulate ultimately arranged for, or persuaded, Wang to leave of his own accord and surrender to what Wang believed were sympathetic Chinese central government officials.
Wang believed that his life might be in jeopardy if he was taken into custody by his enemies from Chongqing, whom he believed to have traveled to Chengdu and surrounded the U.S. Consulate, current and former U.S. officials said.
However, he also believed that representatives of the Beijing central government would protect him because Beijing and Wang shared antagonists in Chongqing, the sources said.
CONSULAR OFFICIALS WARY OF WANG
The U.S. officials who spoke to Reuters said consular officials were also wary of Wang as for some time they had been hearing reports about alleged infighting and corruption among officials in Chongqing and Wang’s personal reputation was not blemish-free.
They said that while U.S. agencies and diplomatic outposts maintain procedures for arranging asylum, and even clandestine escapes for dissidents in mortal danger, the bar is set extremely high for such extreme measures.
Wang’s case did not come close to meeting that standard, officials said, because he was not regarded by U.S. officials as a target for, or a victim of, human rights abuses.
The U.S. officials said that when he arrived unexpectedly at the consulate, Wang told tales of political and financial intrigue involving Bo Xilai and his wife, Gu.
His most sensational disclosure was his claim that Gu had been involved in the alleged murder of Neil Heywood, a British businessman who had helped the couple’s son, Bo Guagua, into Britain’s elite Harrow boarding school.
Heywood died in a Chongqing hotel room in November; his body was cremated three days later. Gu is in custody and Bo has not been seen in public since March, when he was dismissed as boss of Chongqing. He was stripped of his Politburo seat last week.
The White House has kept a very tight lid on what transpired during Wang’s visit to the consulate and it is still unclear how much detailed information he offered about the alleged murder.
William Hague, Britain’s foreign secretary, confirmed in a statement to Parliament this week that Wang had divulged the alleged murder. The British government was briefed early on by U.S. officials about Wang’s description of the alleged murder, U.S. and European officials said.
more
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/21/us-usa-china-bo-idUSBRE83K04920120421
Bo Xilai scandal: Gu Kailai charged with Heywood murder
BBC, July 26
The wife of disgraced Chinese political leader Bo Xilai has been charged with the murder of UK businessman Neil Heywood, state news agency Xinhua says.
Gu Kailai and Zhang Xiaojun, employed at Mr Bo’s home, were “recently” prosecuted by a Chinese court, Xinhua said, without giving further details.
Mr Heywood was found dead in a hotel in Chongqing on 15 November 2011.
The apparent murder of Mr Heywood triggered Mr Bo’s downfall in a scandal that has rocked Chinese politics.