A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel (18 page)

Bo’s tenure in Chongqing was dominated by a protracted war ostensibly directed at the mobsters and powerful officials who colluded with the gangs, enabling them to flourish. Wang Lijun was the campaign’s architect and handler. From 2009 to 2012, an estimated 5,000 people were arrested in the sweeping campaign that ensnared criminals, businessmen, members of the police force, judges, government officials, and political adversaries who were accused of corruption or criminal collaboration. The campaign generated a groundswell of support from the public, which was fed up with corruption and rising crime. Under Bo, the city claimed to have reopened 27,000 unsolved criminal and civil cases, and reduced the number of petitioners appealing for help against corruption by 90 percent.

Bo’s popular social and economic development model, which was enthusiastically endorsed by many senior leaders and scholars as a refreshing approach to China’s problems, also caused controversy. Government statistics show that Chongqing’s 2011 fiscal deficit exceeded 100 billion yuan (US $16 billion), or about 30 percent of the city’s GDP, of which half was caused by Bo’s spending on social welfare and environmental programs. In 2010 alone, Bo spent 10 billion yuan (US $160 million), to plant expensive imported gingko trees and plants that are not suited for the local climate.

Critics say Bo suppressed the growth of private enterprise through discriminatory lending and taxation policies and practices. Business-people complain that private enterprises in Chongqing lost their status guaranteed in the Chinese constitution. A 2012 survey conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Communist Party’s
think tank, revealed that Bo’s radical policy instilled fear in many Chinese entrepreneurs, who opted to leave China and move their assets abroad. About 86 percent of those surveyed expressed their willingness to emigrate to the West.

Despite Chongqing’s success in attracting such investors as Ford Motor Company and Foxconn Technology Group, foreign businessmen worried that government-backed businesses could squeeze them out. A crackdown by city officials in 2010 on Walmart stores over mislabeled pork forced the world’s biggest retailer temporarily to close thirteen of its stores, spooking foreign investors. Christian Murck, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, said, “If the Chongqing model is one that favors a greater role for the government, with state enterprises managing the economy, that is a negative for foreign businesses.”

Once hailed as a pioneering effort to wipe out corruption, Bo’s anticrime initiative revealed a security apparatus run amok. It was said to have framed victims, extracted confessions through torture, extorted business empires, and visited retribution on the political rivals of Bo Xilai and his friends while protecting those with better connections.

In April 2010, a Beijing court, assisted by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, handed out a suspended death sentence to fifty-four-year-old Wang Yi for taking bribes totaling 12 million yuan (US $1.9 million). Wang, who served as vice president of the China Development Bank, was a loyal associate of the Bo family. When Wang attended Beijing University, he was in the same class as Bo Xilai’s sister, who was impressed with Wang’s literary talents and recommended him to be the secretary of Bo Xilai’s father. Following Wang’s arrest, the Bo family was said to have lobbied He Guoqiang, the head of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, for lighter sentencing, but to no avail.

Three months later, Bo Xilai initiated a tit-for-tat retaliation. He ordered the arrest of Chongqing’s former deputy police chief Wen Qiang, who was supposedly a friend and protégé of He Guoqiang when he was Chongqing’s party secretary a decade earlier. Based on information provided by a Chongqing-based Hong Kong businessman
who was well connected with local officials, Bo ordered Wang Lijun to extract negative information about He Guoqiang. Initially, Wen refused to cooperate, but when Wang Lijun tortured Wen and had his only son arrested, Wen complied and made some false accusations about He Guoqiang, depicting him as a corrupt official who had mob connections. Bo showed Wen’s confession to President Hu Jintao’s chief of staff, trying to destroy his credibility as the country’s anti-corruption czar. The businessman acknowleged that he had not read Wen’s confession.

Based on the evidence collected against Wen, Wang Lijun was said to have recommended a suspended death penalty, but Bo insisted on immediate execution. After his death in July 2010, Wen’
s
relatives hinted on numerous occasions that Wen had not deserved the death penalty and that he was a hapless victim of a political feud.

In 2011, Tong Zhiwei, a professor of constitutional law at the Eastern China University of Political Science and Law, completed an internal study of Bo Xilai’s anticrime program. In his report, Tong pointed out that institutions and party officials in Chongqing had forcefully interfered with legal procedures during the “Smashing Black” campaign and some of the measures clearly exceeded constitutional and legal powers. “Arrest without criminal evidence, secret detention, and extracting confession through torture are very common,” he said.

Often, trials were conducted in secret. Even for the so-called public trials, Professor Tong stated, the courts would set aside most of the seats for government officials and court staff. Reporters and ordinary citizens who covered or intended to observe the process were denied access. Sometimes the defendants’ relatives were kept outside the courtroom.

In the name of combating crime, Bo Xilai launched a major electronic surveillance operation in the city, turning Chongqing into an Orwellian state. Tong said Bo Xilai’s anticrime measures intimidated the public and silenced his critics: “Millions of citizens can only cheer for public initiatives that concern their everyday life and are forbidden to air their views in public forums. This is a scary social phenomenon.”

Bo’s intimidation tactics were not empty. A reporter, Gao Yingpu, used his blog to criticize Bo’s anticrime initiatives and the invasive
surveillance program. He “disappeared” in July 2010. Later, his wife was told that Gao had been secretly sentenced to three years in jail for endangering state security. His family was pressured to sign an agreement not to discuss the case with the media, or anyone else, in exchange for lenient treatment. When neighbors asked about Gao’s whereabouts, his wife said he was doing business in Iraq. Jiang Wanyuan, a policeman who posted three comments criticizing Bo Xilai on an online forum called Tianya, was fired and sent to a labor camp for six months.

When a Hong Kong magazine published an article in January 2010 that quoted a retired official saying that Bo Xilai was not premier or president material, police managed to track down the retired official. During the lunar New Year holiday, Bo personally sent him a postcard containing veiled threats.

An article in the Beijing-based
Caijing
magazine highlighted another problem associated with Bo’s “Smashing Black” campaign. Each time a criminal was sentenced or executed, the law enforcement agencies confiscated all of his or her assets; there were no guidelines on whether the assets were acquired legally or illegally, so they took everything. The assets were simply transferred to the government or designated state enterprise, with the result that certain individuals or the state acquired considerable property and money in the name of fighting organized crime.

In a typical case, in February 2010, the Chongqing No. 3 Intermediate People’s Court sentenced Chen Mingliang to death for gambling, bribery, and running a prostitution ring as part of a group of thirty-four people who stood trial in a crackdown on the city’s violent underworld. After Chen’s execution, all of his assets were confiscated. There is no record of where the 200 million yuan’s worth of assets went.

Bo Xilai’s critics also asserted that many of those targeted in the campaign were not criminals, but private businessmen. Their assets were reportedly used to help pay for Bo’s popular social housing programs. In June 2010, Bo ordered the arrest of Peng Zhimin, a top shareholder of the Hilton Hotel in Chongqing and a former municipal legislator. Peng was later sentenced to life imprisonment for his connections to organized crime. The government seized more than
1 billion yuan (US $162,000) worth of assets from him. In an internal article, former police chief Wang Lijun admitted that Peng was crushed because he had openly attacked Bo’s anti-crime campaign.

With a master’s degree in international journalism, Bo displayed a degree of ease with the media unusual for Chinese politicians, and deftly used local outlets at his disposal to push his image and agenda. Before his arrival in Chongqing, editors at the
Chongqing Daily
, the city’s Communist Party paper, specifically organized a team to visit Bo in Beijing and become familiar with his style and approach. Between 2007 and 2012, the
Chongqing Daily
editors were required to obtain approval for every article and photo relating to Bo’s activities. Bo would stay up late and spend a couple of hours reviewing and rewriting the articles before they were published. All other media outlets in the city were ordered to adopt the standard
Chongqing Daily
version. Unlike Bo’s predecessor, who specifically instructed the media to put ordinary people’s stories on the front page, Bo insisted that any articles about him be prominently placed. He demanded that reporters covering his office read
Selected Works of Mao Zedong
and he was never shy about imposing his preferred writing style on journalists. One reporter, who had worked with Bo for three years, said he became so afraid of making a mistake he suffered a nervous breakdown.

Bo’s propensity for showmanship prompted his critics to label him as an egomaniac trying to build a personality cult in Chongqing. In 2010, Bo gave tacit approval for two banners to be displayed in the city center, which read, “Party Secretary Bo Is a People’s Hero and the Whole Nation Salutes Your Team. President Hu Is Wise, Premier Wen Is Remarkable, and Bo Xilai Is Incredible.” A pro-Bo scholar compared Bo and his mayor Huang Qifan to Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou Enlai.

When such criticism and allegations of impropriety leaked out to the overseas media, Bo shrugged them off. He told Glen Kuo—a US businessman who met Bo in Chongqing in the summer of 2011, when Kuo planned to build a resort there—that “Each time you do something, people will always criticize and judge you unfairly. I’m not concerned at all. My motto is, Go your own way and let others talk. It is up to the future generation to make the judgment.”

A
POPULAR GREETING during the 2012 New Year’s celebration was “Hope your career soars like the dragon.” More than anyone else, Bo Xilai wanted his political career to take off. He would be sixty-three on July 3. The 18th Party Congress later in the fall would be his last chance. During the congress, which is held every five years, the majority of the powerful Politburo Standing Committee would be replaced and he had to get in before he reached the mandatory retirement age of sixty-eight. Time was not on his side.

His “Singing Red and Smashing Black” campaign, despite its controversies, was earning him widespread popularity in China. At a time when the legitimacy of the Communist Party was being challenged by the masses, and when the leadership was seeking solutions to the country’s rising social problems, Bo’s program stood out. The national and international media showered attention on the so-called Chongqing model. Seymour Topping, a former
New York Times
reporter, was invited to tour and lecture in Chongqing and wrote an enthusiastic report about Bo. Henry Kissinger traveled to Chongqing three times in 2011 and even attended a red-song performance, even though an online report claimed that Kissinger wrote a scathing memo upon his return saying the Chongqing model could harm Western interest.

Between 2010 and 2011, six Politburo Standing Committee members either personally visited Chongqing or were generous with their praise of what had been achieved there. Wu Bangguo, who was ranked high on the list of the Politburo Standing Committee, said Bo’s low-cost housing program embodied the central government’s pro-people policy and that the anticrime initiatives strengthened people’s trust in the party and the government. “I’m very encouraged by what I have seen,” Wu told the media.

Meanwhile, many princelings, including the grandchild of Mao Zedong and the children of revolutionary veterans such as Chen Yun and Zhu De, publicly voiced their support for the Chongqing experiment. General Liu Yuan, the son of former president Liu Shaoqi and political commissar of the General Logistics Department, launched a
similar anticorruption campaign inside the military. In February, General Liu Yuan ordered the investigation of the deputy head of the General Logistics Department, which oversees much of the military’s real estate holdings and commercial enterprises. General Liu told fellow officers at a meeting that corruption in the military had reached a “dangerous level” and that he would fight it “even if it costs me my job.” Liu’s anticorruption campaign, and similarly high-profile steps such as a belligerent editorial he wrote for a friend’s political book in 2011, mirrored Bo Xilai’s strategy in Chongqing.

Bo’s spirit was probably buoyed by another piece of good news. A group of princelings, with the encouragement of former president Jiang Zemin, secretly speculated on China’s new leadership makeup and put together a list that had Bo Xilai as head of the Political and Legal Commission inside the Politburo Standing Committee. The list was said to have gained wide support among the princelings.

Another propitious sign was the misfortune of Wang Yang, Bo’s predecessor in Chongqing and now the party chief of Guangdong province. Wang was a rival contender for the Politburo Standing Committee. Four months earlier, in September 2011, thousands of peasants in Guangdong’s Wukan village staged a protest after local party officials sold land to real estate developers without properly compensating the villagers. They attacked a government building, a police station, and an industrial park. The local government arrested five protest leaders, and one died while in police custody. The villagers turned on the police and drove them from the village. The police blockaded the village, preventing food and goods from getting through. Newspapers around the world picked up the story of what they called “the Wukan Riot,” highlighting once again what Bo had warned about: inequality in wages and government corruption would lead to instability. In December 2011, Wang Yang—Guangdong's party chief (and now the vice premier of China)—intervened. Village representatives and provincial officials were able to reach a peaceful agreement, satisfying the villagers’ immediate requests.