China's fallen former high-flyer Bo to stand trial Thursday

[Daylight]

China's fallen former high-flyer Bo to stand trial Thursday

China's former Chongqing Municipality Communist Party Secretary Bo Xilai looks on during a meeting at the annual session of China's parliament, the National People's Congress, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, March 6, 2010. REUTERS/Jason Lee

By Benjamin Kang Lim and Ben Blanchard
BEIJING | Sun Aug 18, 2013 6:41am EDT

(Reuters) - The trial of disgraced senior Chinese politician Bo Xilai will start on Thursday, when he will face charges of bribery, corruption and abuse of power in China's most divisive and dramatic case in decades.

The long-awaited trial of Bo, 64, a "princeling" son of a late vice premier who is still popular with conservatives and the disaffected, will be the country's highest-profile hearing since the 1976 downfall of Mao Zedong's widow, Jiang Qing, and her Gang of Four at the end of the Cultural Revolution.

Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, and his estranged police chief, Wang Lijun, have both been jailed over the scandal stemming from the November 2011 murder of British businessman Neil Heywood in the southwestern city of Chongqing, where Bo was Communist Party boss.

Bo's trial will open at the Intermediate People's Court in Jinan, capital of the eastern coastal province of Shandong, at 8:30 a.m. (0030 GMT) on Thursday, Xinhua said in a terse report on Sunday. It gave no further details.

A court spokeswoman confirmed the report, but would not say how long the trial would last, though it could be just a day.

Bo's main lawyer, Li Guifang, did not answer telephone calls seeking comment.

It is almost certain Bo will be convicted as China's prosecutors and judges are controlled by the ruling Communist Party, and he could theoretically be sentenced to death.

"I hope he does not get the death penalty, as this is a method of punishment we should be using less off. But I would expect a strong punishment," said Li Zhuang, a lawyer and prominent opponent of Bo during his time as Chongqing party boss.

The Wall Street Journal said that Bo's wife would be the key witness for the prosecution.

But a source familiar with the situation, who declined to be identified citing the sensitivity of the matter, said Gu would not testify.

It is not clear if she has provided any evidence already to the prosecution.

How Bo's case is handled will be a test of newly installed President Xi Jinping's steel in the battle against deeply ingrained corruption and also show how he has been able to stamp his authority on the party, which he leads.

Xi has vowed to fight both "tigers" and "flies" - in other words people at every level of the party - as he combats graft so serious that he has warned it threatens the party's very survival.

However, his campaign has so far netted precious few "tigers", and in any case the Bo scandal pre-dates Xi's time as national leader.

Bo, a former commerce minister, used his post as party boss of Chongqing to cast the sprawling, haze-covered municipality into a showcase for his mix of populist policies and bold spending plans that won support from leftists yearning for a charismatic leader.

Bo's former police chief, Wang, had spearheaded a controversial drive against organized crime, a prominent plank in Bo's barely concealed campaign to join the top ranks of the party.

Censors appeared to relax the normal tight controls on discussing the trial on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo microblogging service, though opinions were split, reflecting the deep divisions the case has exposed.

"I don't really believe anything about this case, and I don't know if we'll ever get to the bottom of it," wrote one user.

"He had ruthless ambition like Hitler and had a talent for co-opting public opinion," wrote another.

The trial will almost certainly be conducted behind closed doors, which will play into the suspicions of many in China that Bo is simply a victim of elite infighting.

Bao Tong, the most senior government official jailed over the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, urged the government to grant Bo an open and fair trial, saying it was necessary to prevent the assumption that his case is "a product of a political struggle".

Bao also criticized the authorities for detaining a supporter of Bo and preventing a family-appointed lawyer from representing Bo.

"This means that justice is not impartial, justice is only playacting," Bao told Reuters earlier this month. "Now the program has been prepared, the director is there, the actors have rehearsed. We're just waiting for the performance."

(Additional reporting by Sabrina Mao and Wee Sui-Lee; Editing by Nick Macfie)

 

[Daylight]

Flamboyant Chinese princeling faces final indignity

China's former Chongqing Municipality Communist Party Secretary Bo Xilai looks on during a meeting at the annual session of China's parliament, the National People's Congress, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, March 6, 2010. REUTERS/Jason Lee

By Ben Blanchard
BEIJING | Sun Aug 18, 2013 6:39am EDT

(Reuters) - The writing was perhaps already on the wall for Bo Xilai, the controversial former top official of China's southwestern city of Chongqing, when he appeared at last year's parliamentary meeting, alternately chastened and combative.

In earlier annual sessions of parliament, Bo had swept in, all smiles and lanky grace, preceded by a wave of TV cameras and popping flashbulbs. This time he was uncharacteristically restrained.

Bo rolled his eyes at repeated questions from foreign reporters about a scandal involving then-vice mayor Wang Lijun, and the normally effusive state media and parliament delegates kept their distance.

Wang, who doubled as the city's police chief before his downfall, went to ground in the U.S. Consulate in nearby Chengdu in February last year until he was coaxed out and placed under investigation.

"I certainly never expected this," Bo said of Wang's flight. "I felt that it happened extremely suddenly."

News of his own change of fortune came just as suddenly.

A few days after his news conference in March last year, a terse report from the official Xinhua news agency announced that Beijing had sacked Bo from his post, all but snuffing out his chances of rising to the top echelons of the Communist Party.

Now the end appears imminent for Bo, 64, whose long-awaited trial on charges of corruption, accepting bribes and abuse of power opens on Thursday, when he is certain to be found guilty by the Communist Party-controlled court.

Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, and Wang were jailed last year over China's biggest political scandal in years, which stems from the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood in November 2011, a crime for which Gu was convicted.

After first helping Gu evade suspicion of poisoning Heywood, Wang hushed up evidence of the murder, according to the official account of Wang's trial. In late January 2012, Wang confronted Bo with the allegation that Gu was suspected of killing Heywood. But Wang was "angrily rebuked and had his ears boxed".

After Bo was sacked, he disappeared from public view and has not had a chance to respond publicly to the accusations against him.

Sources told Reuters in February that Bo was refusing to cooperate with the government investigation, had staged hunger strikes and had refused to shave to protest against what he saw as his unfair treatment.

"FREE OF REGRETS"

As the outspoken Chongqing party chief, Bo had mounted a daring bid for the nation's top political body, the party's Politburo Standing Committee.

He captured national attention with a crackdown on organized crime and corrupt police officers in Chongqing, China's teeming wartime capital, and brought about stronger economic growth. But he also alienated political peers.

The anti-mafia campaign netted thousands of people and tapped into popular anger over the corruption and collusion that has accompanied China's economic boom.

"Fighting organized crime is for the sake of letting the people enjoy peace and creating a clean social environment in Chongqing," Bo said at his parliamentary news briefing, defending his record.

"We are sure of ourselves and free of regrets."

Bo, a former China commerce minister and mayor of the northeastern port city of Dalian where he wooed foreign investors, once had a flair for the dramatic.

His directness and independent streak impressed foreigners but annoyed peers, who prefer to rule through backdoor consensus and often stilted slogans.

Analysts have noted that no one in the top leadership had publicly praised Bo or the crackdown on organized crime.

Then-Premier Wen Jiabao told his annual news conference last year that Chongqing's leadership should reflect on the Wang Lijun incident, and also obliquely criticized Bo's drive to revive songs and culture from the heyday of Mao's Communist revolution.

Bo is a son of late vice-premier Bo Yibo, making the younger Bo a "princeling" - a child of an incumbent, retired or late national leader.

His wife was a lawyer and their son, Bo Guagua, was educated at an expensive, elite British private school and then Oxford University. The younger Bo's Facebook photos from parties caused their own Internet stir.

While wooing investors, Bo also envisioned low-cost housing for rural poor and migrant laborers, designed to appeal to then-President Hu Jintao's goal of creating a "harmonious society".

He called his vision "Peaceful Chongqing." It included text messages with Maoist slogans, singing old-style revolutionary songs by civil servants, who also had to adopt poor families and staff petition offices where citizens can complain.

But Bo had difficulty shaking off the suspicion of some critics, both inside and outside the country, that he was more concerned with his own rise than that of China.

(Editing by Benjamin Kang Lim and Nick Macfie)