The Fall of Bo Xilai

[Randy W]

A statement from Bo Guagua, son of Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai and a student in the U.S., to the New York Times

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/bo-guaguas-statement.html?emc=edit_tnt_20130819&tntemail0=y

 

 

It has been 18 months since I have been denied contact with either my father or my mother. I can only surmise the conditions of their clandestine detention and the adversity they each endure in solitude. I hope that in my father’s upcoming trial, he is granted the opportunity to answer his critics and defend himself without constraints of any kind. However, if my well-being has been bartered for my father’s acquiescence or my mother’s further cooperation, then the verdict will clearly carry no moral weight.

 

My mother, who is now silenced and defenseless, cannot respond to the opportunistic detractors that attack her reputation with impunity. She has already overcome unimaginable tribulation after the sudden collapse of her physical health in 2006 and subsequent seclusion. Although it is of little comfort to my anxiety about her state of health, I know that she will continue to absorb all that she is accused of with dignity and quiet magnanimity.

Edited August 20, 2013 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

A nice little summary from the Global Times

 

Bo's trial ends, verdict to be announced

 

My favorite -

 

Quote

Prosecutors presented evidence that Bo accepted a large sum of money and property from Xu Ming through Bogu Kailai and his son, Bo Guagua.

 

Confronted with the charges, Bo said that the evidence was irrelevant, saying he had only a vague impression of amounts and no one had told him exactly how much money was being spent.

 

 

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/1236448_550783325002572_369201834_n.jpg

Edited July 13, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

Some inside information from Hillary, in today's Washington Post

 

Clinton reveals U.S. role in high-level 2012 incident with China

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/10/18/clinton-reveals-u-s-role-in-high-level-2012-incident-with-china/?wprss=rss_world&clsrd

 

The incident began in January 2012, when Wang Lijun, the deputy mayor and police chief of the southwestern city of Chongqing, confronted his boss, controversial Mayor Bo Xilai, with suspicions that Bo's wife had been involved in the murder of British businessman Neil Haywood. Bo responded by slapping Wang in outrage and demoting his longtime associate. A few days later, Wang fled to the U.S. Consulate in nearby Chengdu, apparently terrified for his life, and requested asylum.

 

. . .

 

U.S. officials quickly decided, Clinton says, that Wang did not meet the legal requirement for asylum. "He did not fit any of the categories for the United States giving him asylum," she said. "He had a record of corruption, of thuggishness, of brutality. He was an enforcer for Bo Xilai." U.S. law prohibits asylum for anyone who has participated in the persecution of others, a standard that would probably have applied to Wang's famously heavy-handed campaign against Bo's political enemies in Chongqing.

 

. . .

 

While Clinton does not reveal the content of Wang's message, his flight to the consulate triggered the beginning of Bo's fall from a Communist Party rising star to disgrace and imprisonment. Top party officials quickly turned against him, publicly denouncing him and later accusing him of complicity in Haywood's murder.

 

Clinton added that the United States ruled out allowing Wang to stay at its consulate in Chengdu, something that other Chinese asylum-seekers have done to avoid arrest.

 

[Randy W]

"Details of Bo's case, the reasons for his crimes and warnings taken from them have been discussed based on an official document issued by central authorities"

 

Local Party committees organize conferences to learn from Bo Xilai case

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/824167.shtml?utm_content=buffer1731f&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=Buffer#.UoGJLdJ9efM

 

Conferences were launched by government organs at different levels, such as the provincial Party committee of Northwest China's Shaanxi Province and the weather bureau in Dalian, Northeast China's Liaoning Province.

The content of the document has not been made public. . . .
"It's a convention that disgraced high-ranking officials are taken as negative examples for other civil servants," . . .

"It instructs Party members or officials at higher levels to maintain the authority of central authorities. It delivers the message that strengthening the political discipline within the Party should still be a top priority under the centralized leadership," Chen said.

For grass-roots Party members, the conferences speak more from a perspective of anti-corruption, Chen said.

 

[Randy W]

More reading material on Bo in the Global Times, if you're still interested. This is about the challenges they are facing in trying to sort out his legacy

 

Appeals flood Chongqing

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/829017.shtml?utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=buffer0a255&utm_medium=facebook#.UpvpB56VNQA

 

Chongqing, one of China's four municipalities in the Southwest, has begun recovering from a tumultuous period of mafia crackdowns, nostalgic albeit politically charged revolutionary red song campaigns, and the ruptures caused by being epicenter of the political earthquake that brought down the most infamous politician in China's recent history, Bo Xilai.

But the wounds are still healing, particularly those dealt to Chongqing's legal system, as appeals flood local courts.

Ever since Bo, formerly a member of the Communist Party of China's (CPC) Central Committee Political Bureau and secretary of the CPC Chongqing Committee, fell from grace and his key lieutenant police chief Wang Lijun was cast out, the legal legacy of their tenure has been a blight upon Chongqing. Many charged with organized crime as a part of Wang's "Chongqing Gang Trials" have risen up to make appeals, claiming they were forced to confess.

Li Zhuang, formerly the lawyer for one of the key targets of the gang trial campaign, who has closely observed the legal climate in Chongqing during and after Bo's tenure, estimates that thousands of people are filing appeals.

"Not only the convicted, but also many of their relatives, friends and even neighbors who were illegally treated during the interrogation process are lodging appeals," Li told the Global Times.

 

[Randy W]

A new little novel from the BBC, if anyone is still interested . . .

 

Murder in the Lucky Holiday Hotel

By Carrie Gracie

17 March 2017

 

“He stayed late at work and hardly ever went home. His office lights were always on even in the middle of the night. The people of Dalian thought he was working so hard and said they had a great mayor. But he was probably up to something with those beautiful women.”

I've talked to several government people in Dalian who say Gu did a good job of scaring off at least one rival. They also say there were young models who simply disappeared. I couldn't get to the bottom of these rumours.

But this is China. If you control a city, you control the police, the courts and the media. You can make people appear... and you can make them disappear.

One man who has first-hand experience of this is Dalian businessman Zhang Yongxiang. One moment Bo wanted Zhang's help in taking down one of his enemies, the next he had become an enemy himself, finding out what it meant to incur the mayor's displeasure.

He says Bo set up a team of interrogators, who tortured his family, forcing them to endure nine days and nights of interrogation without sleep.

Sixteen members of the family were detained, and police were hunting for more.

“My cousin was on the train from Dalian to Shanghai to take my sister-in-law to hospital. On the way back, he somehow fell off the train and was killed,” says Zhang. “The police said he jumped. But I don't believe them. Did they beat him to death? Did they shoot him dead? The police owe us answers.”

And until they get those answers, the family refuses to bury the body. They've been waiting 15 years.

That's the dark side of Bo Xilai's Dalian. None of it was visible to the public. As far as they were concerned they had a perfect mayor and he had a perfect wife. Charming, good-looking… one Western businessman who worked in Dalian in those days compares them to JFK and Jackie Kennedy.

Though their marriage was by now a sham, husband and wife still kept up appearances for the sake of the power and the money. But Dalian was never going to provide enough of either.

 

 

[Greg.D.]

Well, that much was good reading!

[Randy W]

Revisiting - with the arrest of a foreign national for interfering in Hong Kong affairs

 

from the SCMP

 

Belize businessman held over Hong Kong unrest had ties to Bo Xilai

Media reports highlight Lee Henley Hu Xiang’s testimony in trial of former Chongqing party boss, who was jailed for life in 2013

Verdict in Bo’s trial said Lee had testified that his company was involved in a complex US$3m property deal on the French Riviera

A brief report in local official media accused Lee of “providing a large amount of funds to hostile elements in the United States, colluding with foreign anti-China forces to intervene in Hong Kong affairs, and funding the implementation of criminal activities that endangered [China’s] national security”.

Lee’s link with Bo’s case was first reported by Hong Kong’s Sing Tao Daily on Monday.

Global Times, however, suggested Lee had emerged unscathed from his involvement in Bo’s case.

 

 

 

 

[Allon]

I mention Bo Xilai to my wife and she turns cold. He was well known in Liaoning, the province, and she will not talk about him. But she does mutter under her breath.