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Authors: Wenguang Huang Pin Ho

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Wang wanted the phones for a very specific purpose. He typed up different messages exposing Bo’s role in Heywood’s death and stored them in each phone. In the event that his escape plan failed and he was abruptly killed, Wang urged his friend to give each phone to a trusted
individual, who would release the messages at different times in the following week. A reporter with the
Southern Metropolis Daily
received a phone note from Wang three days after his defection that said, “Bo Xilai and his wife are connected with the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood.”

Wang left with the driver Pengfei provided, and headed directly to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. On the highway, he phoned a deputy director of the Sichuan provincial public security, saying that he needed a face-to-face meeting to discuss something very important. The deputy director drove to the highway exit to greet Wang. The two had lunch and Wang claimed he had been asked to brief American officials at the consulate about an urgent joint US–China antiterrorism program. Because he hadn’t set up an appointment, Wang asked if the deputy director, a designated liaison with the US Consulate, could make the connection. The deputy director willingly obliged and phoned the consulate. At 2:30 P.M., Wang had walked into the American mission on Consulate Road in Chengdu. Consul General Peter Haymond was out of town. Two senior consulate officials greeted Wang. Without realizing the political storm that was about to erupt around them, US diplomats took Wang to the consulate’s library rather than a safe room designed to block Chinese surveillance. The initial conversation centered on promoting further exchanges on antiterrorism initiatives. Then the political asylum request came up.

Western media and anonymous sources in Beijing and Chongqing provided more details.
Newsweek
reported:

       
The American ambassador Gary Locke was at an afternoon meeting in Beijing, away from his office at the American Embassy, when he received a cryptic email on his BlackBerry: “Return to the embassy’s secure communications area immediately.” The ambassador rushed back. It was Feb. 6, and Locke was stunned to learn that a senior Chinese policeman had arrived at the U.S. Consulate in the southwestern city of Chengdu, telling officials there that he wanted to go to the U.S. because he feared for his life.

           
Wang Lijun, known as the Eliot Ness of China for his ruthless campaign against organized crime, told a riveting story of how his
one-time mentor, a local party secretary by the name of Bo Xilai, was out to kill him because he knew too much about the alleged poisoning and murder of a British businessman, Neil Heywood, who had known Bo and his wife. It was “fascinating, eye-popping revelations,” Locke said. “My first reaction was ‘oh, my God,’ I mean ‘OH, MY GOD!’”

Bill Gertz with the
Washington Free Beacon
, a conservative online news service in the US, quoted a US official as saying that Wang had divulged information about the power struggle within the Politburo Standing Committee. Wang claimed that Zhou Yongkang and Bo Xilai had conspired to “upset the smooth succession of Xi Jinping,” who was designated to be the party general secretary later in the year.

According to the
New York Times
, Wang sounded “agitated” and “incoherent” during the conversations, and “the American diplomats who oversaw his brief, bizarre stay pre-empted any formal application for asylum because of the difficulties of spiriting him out of the country and questions about his eligibility.”

The US State Department and the White House might have underestimated the potential impact of Wang’s action, mistakenly thinking that he was a mere regional official and that the information he offered held little value. More important, it happened a week before Xi Jinping’s much-publicized visit to the US. “Granting asylum to Mr. Wang could have soured or scuttled Mr. Xi’s trip,” said the
New York Times
.

As a courtesy, a source said that US officials notified the Chinese Foreign Ministry of Wang’s presence at the US Consulate.

In the end, Wang agreed that the best option was to hand himself over to authorities in Beijing. Consulate officials did allow Wang to use his phone to contact his friends in Beijing so he wouldn’t end up in the hands of Bo Xilai’s security forces. Wang reportedly got ahold of Zhou Yongkang, who informed Wang that a delegation had been dispatched from Beijing to meet him.

A Chinese official briefed on Wang’s investigation claimed Wang had brought a suitcase containing documents detailing his own investigation of Neil Heywood’s murder and the Bo family’s attempts to transfer assets overseas. On learning his asylum request would not be
granted, the paper said Wang did not hand over the documents. However, the
Wall Street Journal
, which quoted US officials who witnessed what had happened, reported that Wang might not have brought the documents. Before he left the consulate, Wang “slipped US diplomats the cell phone number of an accomplice” who could help produce the evidence about Heywood’s murder:

       
The US handed the cell phone number over to British diplomats and gave them instructions on how to track down the information from Wang’s mysterious accomplice. The instructions included setting up an e-mail account under a designated name with a popular Chinese e-mail and messaging service. The British set up the account and texted the cell phone number. People involved gave conflicting accounts of the timing and whether the accomplice responded. For reasons that are unclear, the British never received the promised documents.

As Wang Lijun was spilling out the astonishing details about how Heywood was allegedly murdered, an equally captivating drama was unfolding outside the US Consulate.

The minute Wang had walked into the consulate, Chinese staff inside reported the information to officials at the Sichuan provincial State Security Department, who immediately alerted senior officials in Beijing, including Zhou Yongkang, who headed the Central Politics and Law Commission. Zhou telephoned Bo Xilai, urging Bo to “get Wang out at any cost.”

The deputy director of the Sichuan provincial police department, who helped arrange Wang’s meeting with US Consulate officials, also sensed that something had gone wrong after Wang failed to emerge from his private meeting after four hours. He reported Wang’s activity to Liu Qibao, the Sichuan provincial party secretary, who promptly contacted senior leaders in Beijing. President Hu Jintao instructed Liu to send armed police to the US Consulate to prevent Wang Lijun from slipping away.

Meanwhile, the exasperated Bo Xilai decided to resolve the situation before Beijing could get its hands on the documents in Wang’s possession. He first sent Huang Qifan, the mayor of Chongqing, to the
consulate to bring Wang back. Huang hurried over with an assistant and requested a meeting with Wang inside. The mayor talked to Wang for nearly an hour, trying to persuade him to leave the consulate building, but Wang refused. No matter what promises the mayor made, Wang wouldn’t return to Chongqing.

After sending the mayor to Chongqing, the hotheaded Bo also dispatched what many witnesses claimed were seventy cars carrying armed policemen to Chengdu, but the provincial armed police intercepted Bo’s people five blocks away from the US Consulate. The two sides got into fierce arguments. A Chongqing police officer who witnessed the incident said Bo Xilai was sitting in one of the police cars. When Bo learned that the mayor failed to get Wang out, he turned hostile. With the excuse that the Chongqing police had received tips that terrorists had planted a bomb inside the US Consulate, Bo ordered his men to break the blockade set by the provincial police, force their way into the American mission, and seize Wang. As the confrontation was escalating, members of the US Marine Corps Embassy Security Group set up a line of defense inside. Three armed forces, each answering to a different command, buzzed around the consulate.

News of possible attacks on the US Consulate quickly reached President Hu Jintao, who was said to be alarmed by what he called an “armed revolt.” He was also embarrassed and angry at Bo’s reckless behavior, which had broken international laws and exposed the Communist Party’s internal division to the outside world. President Hu personally phoned Liu Qibao, the Sichuan party secretary, requesting that he use whatever means possible to protect the US mission. Liu first ordered the provincial armed police to take up positions in front of the US Consulate, facing Bo’s policemen. Then he cobbled together additional members of the armed police and the provincial State Security Department in Chengdu to keep Bo’s police at bay. A retired US official who was briefed on the situation told me that about seven hundred police officers were outside the US Consulate that night.

To defuse tension, the Sichuan provincial policemen stationed in Chengdu even offered their counterparts in Chongqing local snacks and persuaded them not to act irrationally. The confrontation lasted five hours.

Around midnight on February 7, a small delegation, led by the deputy minister of state security, flew in to Chengdu and immediately headed to the consulate. They handed Wang a letter from Zhou Yongkang, who promised, “Your political career won’t be affected and we’ll protect your safety and conduct a fair investigation if you voluntarily leave.” With asylum becoming a remote possibility, Wang saw Zhou’s offer as his only choice. Before his departure, consular officials emphasized the US government would closely monitor his situation.

As Wang stepped out with officials from the State Security Ministry, China’s intelligence agency, he caught a glimpse of the fully armed US Marines deployed inside the consulate walls and a large number of Chinese armed police outside. Wang must have realized the grave consequences of his action. As he was about to get in the car, Chongqing mayor Huang Qifan rushed over, trying to wrestle Wang away. The deputy minister from Beijing stopped him and in the process, the two men got into a scuffle. At one point, they parted and stood on opposite sides of the street, each contacting his respective boss. The deputy minister reached Zhou Yongkang, who in turn called Bo Xilai, asking him to withdraw. Bo ignored him. President Hu Jintao finally stepped in and phoned Bo, assuring him that Wang’s attempted defection was an isolated incident and Wang’s investigation would in no way affect Bo’s work in Chongqing. Bo gave in and ordered his men to withdraw.

On the early morning of February 8, Wang left Consulate Road with officials from the State Security Ministry. Because the airport was closed, they stayed in a nearby hotel guarded by armed police from Sichuan province, and flew out when the airport opened.

In the afternoon, an airline insider posted online the scanned boarding passes of Wang and his handlers at the State Security Ministry, including the deputy minister. This revealed that Wang had taken China Airlines Flight 4113 for Beijing.

News about Wang’s botched defection shocked his supporters. His trip to the consulate prompted Wei Ke, a well-known cartoonist, to post a sarcastic comment online:

       
In the future, if any of those damn officials wish to escape, don’t go to the US Consulate. Didn’t you all hate Americans? Haven’t you deceived a large number of young pigheaded lackeys to rally around your anti-American causes? Why don’t you run to your North Korean friends? I advise US officials to kick out any bastards who show up in the future.

After Wang was taken away to Beijing, his friends and foes continued to battle fiercely in the blogosphere. Insiders in Beijing fed startling information to overseas media to dispel the myth of Wang as a national anti-crime hero and silence his supporters.

For example, on April 11, both Boxun and Hong Kong-based
Wai Can
carried articles on Wang’s surveillance programs. In the name of combating crime, an insider said Wang had partnered with the president of the Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications, one of the architects of China’s notorious Internet censoring system—the “Great Firewall”—and set up an extensive surveillance system that involved wiretaps and monitoring of Internet communications in 2009. Wang had bugged the phones of several senior leaders during their visits to Chongqing.

Wang found out that President Hu Jintao communicated regularly via a secure hotline with his friend Liu Guanglei, who served on the Chongqing Municipal Party Standing Committee. He began to wiretap their conversations. The surveillance device was later uncovered by the technical staff at the Central Party Committee’s general office. Tapping leadership phones is considered the number-one taboo in Beijing. In the Mao era, Yang Shangkun, who served as Mao’s chief of staff in the 1960s, installed listening devices in Mao’s train cars and recorded Mao’s many womanizing activities. Yang ended up with severe punishment during the Cultural Revolution. The source who supplied the story surmised that Wang would be dealt with similarly.

After the story was released, I interviewed an IT expert, who did not think the surveillance was technically possible. So, I posted his comments as a follow-up to Wang’s wiretapping story, questioning the authenticity of what had been reported. However, the subsequent
indictment against Wang Lijun showed that the insider’s information was largely accurate. According to the court, Wang had violated the country’s laws and regulations “by using technical reconnaissance measures on a number of people since 2010, either without the approval of authorities or by forging approval documents.”

In an article by
Nandu Weekly
, a popular newspaper owned by the one of the most liberal newspaper chains in Guangzhou, the Chongqing police department, under Wang Lijun, budgeted more than US $300 million to purchase surveillance equipment from Germany and Israel, and to construct what Wang describes as the “Big Intelligence Center.” At a conference in January 2010, Wang bragged that his “Big Intelligence Center” could check the whole population in China in 12.5 minutes. In addition, if a targeted person surfed the Internet, bought an airline ticket, or shopped with credit cards, police would have that information immediately. The Chongqing police could also use GPS technology to monitor the activities of criminals and political dissidents. During the Chinese New Year celebration in 2010, about 4,000 out-of-towners with criminal records entered the city of Chongqing. Within six hours, police tracked down 3,400 of them and advised them to leave Chongqing.

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