The End of Bo Xilai
By Natalie Wang
When one of the most charismatic Chinese leaders is ousted in a tangle of mystery, all it takes is just one sentence and 54 characters for People’s Daily to wrap up his whole career. Bo Xilai, China’s once ambitious, flamboyant and most importantly attention-mongering, former party leader of Chongqing, surely lived out the terse 54 characters, if not too few for him.
Bo was widely speculated to be a promising contender for a seat in China’s once- in-a-decade power change among its nine-member politburo, the highest decision-making body in China. But one day after premier Wen Jiaobao obliquely slammed Bo Xilai at government’s annual press conference on March 14, Bo found himself demoted and stripped of any power over Chongqing.
Three days after the news broke, Bo’s removal still extends shock waves throughout Chongqing, the place where Bo thrived and gained a popular support for his storming anti-gangster movement and cultural revolution style “red song campaign”.
“He’s been removed?” “When?” “Isn’t he still in Beijing having meetings?” are the questions spewed out the minute I told the news to my grandparents in Chongqing.
The exact reason why he was suddenly jolted out China’s top political game is still unknown and no one will ever likely know the full behind-the-scenes story beyond what the state media refers to as the “Wang Lijun incident” — when Bo’s right-hand man, Wang Lijun, Chongqing’s former police chief, apparently sought political asylum at the U.S. consulate in Chengdu.
But some scholars argued that the Wang Lijun incident only served as a convenient pretense to dismantle Bo and his once popular Chongqing model. His Neo-Maoist approach upset many of China’s liberal and reform-minded leaders who feared Bo’s policy would bring back another cultural revolution in China.
He Weifang, law professor at Peking University, said in an email that Bo’s campaigns in Chongqing triggered much controversy in China. He pointed out that Bo’s much-campaigned Chongqing model was characterized by a “red Communist” culture revival, a gang-busting campaign and an effort at narrowing the wealth gap, among which the second were most criticized for the way in which targets were prosecuted. Over 3,000 people were arrested and 13 executed since the anti-gangster campaign began in 2009.
He said that during Bo’s tenure in Chongqing, the tensions caused by the wealth gap were indeed eased. By December 2011, Chongqing’s Gini coefficient dropped to 0.421, lower than the 0.55 national average estimated by UN. But he doubted the reliability of the Chongqing figures released by the local government, urging independent organizations to monitor the results.
Regarding Bo’s removal and the collapse of Chongqing model, He Weifang said it rings an optimistic tone for future political reform in China. “It shows that the majority of China’s top leaders in the Politburo refused to adopt a Cultural Revolution-style approach to solve current social issues,” he said. He noted that premier Wen Jiabao has in recent years talked about political reform, though details of political reforms are yet to be specified and implemented.
But for some locals in Chongqing, Bo’s removal simply means relief. Wang Qian, a resident whose father was a local police chief during the anti gangster campaign, said that everyone in his father’s bureau was paranoid during the gangster crackdown, not necessarily because they had shielded local gangsters, but because of the gruesome atmosphere the crackdown had created. “After former police chief Wen Qiang was arrested, the atmosphere was so intense. My dad was really nervous. I’ve never seen him like that before. It escalated into a movement of everyone against everyone. ”
