Full of Hollywood-styled high drama, the curious case of Bo Xilai has taken another turn. This time he and his lawyer-wife have been found implicated in the untimely death (by poisoning) last year of a British national Neil Heywood, who was known to be a close confidant of the Bo family and their son's UK guardian. He was reported to be in possession of incriminating documents showing the Bo's ill-gotten gains which he helped to transfer overseas.
There are other more startling movie-style rumours. For example, Mrs Bo was said to have developed a romantic relationship with Heywood, before he was later found to be cheating on some of the Bo's assets entrusted to his care. All these are in addition to alleged findings of Bo's corruption, stacking up hundreds of millions of dollars by selling patronage, together with his hidden licentious lifestyle.
The most frightening of these rumours suggests that betting on his assumed entry into the Politburo Standing Committee, the Party's nine-member top leadership, Bo is already starting to hatch a future palace coup to seize power in Zhongnanhai by 2014. Amongst his supporters are a close personal ally (in charge of public security) already inside the Politburo Standing Committee and some princeling army generals, including the head of the Second Artillery Corp in charge of China's nuclear and ballistic weaponry. The whole plot is said to be backed by cultivating a network of ingratiated writers in the media inside and outside China.
It is no wonder that Beijing had to act quickly and decisively to nip a political ulcer in the bud and to stop the overdrive of the rumour mill. After abruptly stripping Bo of his position as Party Secretary, high-profile announcements were made to remove him formally from the Politburo. These decisons made front-page news in the Party’s media organs such as the People’s Daily and the China Daily. They were followed by a series of pledges of allegiance to the Party leadership by various high-ranking army generals in state media organs, reminiscent of political struggles in China's Revolutionary bygone days.
All this drama naturally offers a field day for even more media rumours and speculation of palace intrique and power struggle. See, for example, the article in the New York Times Click here
Aside from the hype and some politically-motivated commentaries in the mass media, there is much truth in the fact that China is now at a political and economic crossroads. Years of breathless, labour-and-resource-intensive growth with low returns and worsening ecological stress are proving, as Premier Wen has warned, "unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable". The rich are getting richer while the poor are feeling being left behind. Moreover, with a much better-educated and internet-enabled burgeoning middle class, stalling progress in democracy is no longer an option.
Like any other political system of a huge country, there may be "camps" or "factions" within the Party with different views on the direction which the government is taking. Nevertheless, there is no disagreement that the wealth gap must be narrowed and corruption must be curbed, if the Party is to survive China’s developmental trajectory. There is also common consensus that China has to find her own path to democracy, rather than just copying the Western model of multi-party adversarial politics, which does not appear all that convincing to Chinese planners in the light of recent political gridlock on Capitol Hill and "the-99%-against-the-1%" as captured by the Occupay Movement worldwide.
Perhaps what quickens Bo Xilai downfall is not so much competition for a seat in the Politburo Standing Committee from his alleged rival Guangdong Party Secetary Wang Yang (see Part I of this story Click here ). Nor is it his “princeling” pedigree, for a blue-blood princeling, Vice President Xi Jinping, is now the next President-in-waiting.
What Bo was trying to pull off is first to distinguish himself as the father of an alternative “Chongqing Model”, charaterized by “Smashing the Black" (the criminal mafia) and "Singing the Red" (political songs). The former won Bo a lot of kudos amongst the small guys-in-the-street living in fear of the thugs. The latter harks back to what a large proportion of the masses think are the good old Revolutionary days, a kind of Marxist utopia in contrast to the corruption-ridden inequalities under the watch of the current leadership.
This Revolutionary nostalgia is not without intellectual support. There are self-styled “neo-Marxists” or “Leftists” who think that China is now moving in the wrong direction. However, apart from pointing their fingers at China's current ills, these theorists do not appear to have advanced any convincing alternative political system that commands the confidence of the vast majority of the masses.
Most people still think that the Party, for all its defects, has largely managed to deliver the goods they want. For example, the latest Gallup Poll (9 April, 2012) of the BRICS countries show that during the past three years, the Brazilians and Chinese were most satisfied with their living standards. But only the Chinese felt continuous improvement during three successive years (60% in 2009, 66% in 2010, and 72% in 2011).
Like virtually everybody else in the Politburo, both Bo Xilai and his father Bo Yibo suffered grave harship during the Cultural Revolution. It is therefore counter-intuitive that his Chongqing Model sought to revive some of the form, if not the substance, of those atrocious times. It is also not surprising that as guardians of China’s economic success so far, the current members of the Politburo Standing Committee, with their own personal sufferings during the Cultural Revolution, stand united against what they perceive as a dangerous “great leap backward”.
Perhaps what ultimately brought down Bo was how his hidden corruption and reckless scheming caught up on him. His “Smash Black” campaign was likened to a Parisian “reign of terror”, including the flouting of the law, enriching himself with arbitrary confiscations, and resorting to torture and other extreme measures to strike down personal enemies. Ultimately, his total lack of integrity was exposed when more and more of his irregularities came to the fore. The hugely embarrassing saga of the flight of his chief lieutenant, Wang Lijun, to the American consulate in Chengdu, and the subseqent revelations of Bo's reckless transgressions, including the alleged pre-meditated murder of Neil Heywood, proved to be the final nails in his political coffin.
It is instructive that after the curtain was drawn on Bo, Premier Wen Jiabao, when handing over the appointment edict to the new Chief Executive-Elect of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (which was recently mired in sagas of alleged corruption and rent-seeking in high places), chose to remind the incoming Hong Kong supremo of the importance of personal integrity as a leader. He quoted from Confucius’ Analects, “To govern is to be upright. When the leader is upright, who else dares not to follow?”
Seen in another way, perhaps it is inevitable that Bo had to go, regardless of any perceived political struggle. With the many challenges the Party is already facing during China’s turbo-charged trajectory, the stability of the Party-boat can ill afford to accommodate such a scheming and distabilizing character as Bo Xilai, however good a track record he may have achieved in other areas.
The latest Five Year Plan (2011-15) contains concrete policy reforms to attain a more balanced and equitable economy and society. Further reform recommenations on the state sector and civil society are embedded in "China 2030: Building a Modern, Harmonious and Creative High-Income Society",the latest 468-page joint report of the World Bank and the Development Research Centre of the State Council. The Report is known to be personally backed by Li Keqiang, the next Premier-in-Waiting. Click here
In the light of the unsettling Bo Xilai saga, there is likely to be more impetus amongst the top leadership to push ahead with reforms.The prognosis seems to be favourable if the likely political line-up of a new Politburo Standing Committee is as predicted by Frank Ching, a Hong Kong-based journalist in his 9 April article in YaleGlobal Online. Click here
After the tempest, the time seems to be arriving for some sunshine as China embarks on the road to what is the most urgent of all reforms - political reform. This could start with allowing greater freedom of expression, official recognition and promotion of NGOs, and most importantly, the establishment of a more independent judiciary appointed by a State Council commission (instead of by local and provincial governmens), coupled with more open and fair village-elections across the land, learning from the recent Wukan example.
