China’s Bo Xilai to continue haunting the CCP

By Sushil Seth

China’s political tempest, unleashed early this year with the removal of Chongqing metropolis’ powerful boss and party leader, Bo Xilai, is still causing low level disturbance which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership is trying to contain. And this is being done at two levels.

The first is how best to deal with Gu Kailai, Bo’s wife, without mixing it up with her husband’s Party situation. She has already been tried for murdering the British businessman, Neil Heywood and given a suspended death sentence. Which, in some ways, is more sinister because the issue can be revisited depending on the exigencies of the situation at a given time. And she can be forced to sing any song based on the lyrics written by the CCP headquarters, implicating her husband or others.

One of the mitigating circumstances that has saved her from the gallows, for the time being at least, is that she was mentally unhinged at the time of poisoning Heywood because of the maternal instinct to protect her son, Bo Guagua. Heywood had allegedly threatened to destroy Bo over a failed real estate deal. But this is dismissed by Heywood’s friends, who did everything to smooth Bo’s induction into the British educational environment.

The second issue is how to deal with Bo Xilai, believed to have been seeking to mobilize a Cultural Revolution kind of frenzy. That is what Premier Wen Jiabao feared at the time. Bo was engaged in some wide-ranging campaign to target gangsters and mafia elements, leading to the arrest and torture of some people. He was also playing on the widening income disparities between the rich and the poor, using Maoist red banner as a rallying point.

His police chief, Wang Lijun, was instrumental in a wide-ranging violent police crackdown in Chongqing at Bo’s behest. Wang later sought asylum in the American consulate in Chengdu (not granted) and spilled the beans on Gu’s murder of Neil Heywood.  Despite the odious side of Bo’s violence, many in Chongqing reportedly still remember his measures to help poor.

Bo, though, was pushing his political button too hard to capitalize on the Mao legend with the Chinese people to reach one of the highest prizes of a place in the 9-member standing committee of the CCP, which is China’s ultimate governing body.  And he apparently had some support within the party hierarchy. Which made the dominant party leadership nervous and keen to prevent him from a place in the standing committee, and then using it as a platform to subvert the system and tailor it to his political ambitions.

But a chain of events turned the tables on Bo Xilai when his police chief, Wang Lijun, sought asylum at the US consulate in Chengdu. He spilled the beans on Gu’s murder of Neil Haywood, and other gory stuff of torture and killings under Bo’s political dispensation, of which Wang was the principal instrument and for which he would be separately tried at some point of time.

All this was happening to coincide with the National People’s Congress session in March. It was an opportune time for the ruling faction to remove Bo from his Chongqing leadership position and from the politburo. And that is where he is languishing, possibly in some sort of detention, to face charges at a later time.

Gu’s case was a priority to get it out of international headlines as China’s new Lady Macbeth after Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, who played a major role in organizing Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution turning the country upside down.

 Bo Xilai is likely to face charges of violent breach of party discipline, including corruption and whatever else can be thrown at him. He is likely to be expelled from the party, and might even be charged with multiple other stuff. In this way both Gu and Bo will become non-persons before the transition to the new Party leadership later in the year at the 18^th Party Congress. Even though it looks like a very neat script, there is always a danger of things not quite working as planned.

Some believe that that Bo and his wife were framed, as the former was threatening to undermine the existing cozy system of a nexus between political and economic power in the current structure.

Indeed, China’s party echelons seem divided over the way Gu and Bo cases be handled. That is probably why Gu’s sentence is a bit tentative allowing the CCP time to make up its mind finally over time.

 The so-called liberals in the CCP suspect that Gu and Bo might receive lenient treatment because of their lineage, both being the children of revolutionary heroes. While the Left (Maoists) believe that Bo has been framed and Gu’s murder charge is a way to get at him. According to one Chinese professor, “The group of capitalist roaders [the terminology used against Mao’s enemies in the Cultural Revolution] has brought down the socialist roader”, meaning Bo Xilai. 

Professor Han Deqiang reportedly added, “This means crisis and turmoil for China.” Indeed, the feelings are so high among some Chinese netizens (on the internet) that they believe Gu’s picture on the Chinese TV at the time of her trial was indeed her double, being so plump compared to her real image.

The attempt by some to posit Bo as some kind of a popular hero is overdrawn. Bo and his wife were highly privileged and powerful couple because of the system in which they operated, with their son studying abroad and driving flash cars. And they were also privileged, being the scions of revolutionary leaders.

In other words, it was more like a power grab by Bo to reach among the top nine standing committee members and then to maneuver to capture power. But he was outmaneuvered and lost.

However, this might not be the last word on the subject because Bo’s image as the personification of the Maoist ideal of an equal and revolutionary society will likely haunt the CCP. And if he is sent to the purgatory, he might even become a martyr figure as the true heir of Mao’s legend.