A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel (22 page)

Once his situation turned for the better, Bo Yibo had an affair with his secretary, a Guangdong-born Communist activist, in the early 1940s. He requested a divorce from his wife, but she declined. Bo Yibo continued the affair and three times got his secretary pregnant. For a young woman, premarital pregnancies were considered a disgrace. The secretary had to undergo three abortions. This eventually moved—or appalled—Bo Yibo’s wife so much that she agreed to the divorce, probably saving the young woman’s life. Many years later, his ex-wife was quoted as saying:

       
His divorce request really hurt my father’s feelings. My father had risked his life to rescue him. . . . But I had to grant the divorce. I had no choice. The secretary already had three abortions. As a woman, I can’t see her going through these abortions again and again. Her life could be endangered.

The secretary’s name was Hu Ming. Known for her beauty and intelligence, the idealistic Hu Ming had joined the Communist revolution at the age of sixteen and specialized in youth, publicity, and woman-related work. She married Bo Yibo in 1945, and after they moved to Beijing in 1949, Hu Ming held various midlevel jobs at government ministries and bureaus. She gave birth to four boys and two girls. Bo Xilai was her second child.

When Bo Yibo was purged in the Cultural Revolution, Hu Ming, who was then in Guangzhou, was escorted back to Beijing on January 5, 1967, to expose her husband’s crimes. On the Beijing–Guangzhou express train, Hu Ming died mysteriously. The Red Guards accompanying her claimed that she committed suicide, but later reports hold that she was beaten to death by her handlers. She would have been forty-eight that year.

In the 1980s, when Bo Yibo’s son Bo Xilai requested a divorce from his wife so he could marry Gu Kailai, some people brought up Bo Yibo’s two marriages, calling Bo Xilai “a replica of his father.” Before his death, Bo Yibo’s reputation was tainted by his treatment of Hu Yaobang, the reform-minded party general secretary who was instrumental in ending his ten-year imprisonment. In November 1986,
when university students around the country started to hold small-scale demonstrations—in hindsight this was a warning of the much bigger movement that would come three years later—demanding transparency in government and action against the corruption of officials, Bo Yibo sided with hardliners and blamed Hu Yaobang’s liberal policies for creating the chaos. Hu Yaobang resigned in January 1987, under the pressure of Bo Yibo and other veteran revolutionaries. When Hu Yaobang suffered a heart attack in 1989 and a nationwide student prodemocracy movement broke out, Bo Yibo supported Deng Xiaoping’s decision to suppress the movement with force.

In a final twist of the overlapping lives of Bo father and son, twenty-two years later, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, both considered Hu Yaobang’s protégés, ended the political career of the son.

B
EFORE THEIR TAKEOVER of China in 1949, the Communists spent years fighting a guerrilla war against the better armed ruling Nationalists and operating an extensive network of underground Communist agents in China’s key cities. Spies were a popular theme in propaganda movies, depicting heroic underground Communist agents who eavesdropped on enemy conversations, left important notes for other Communists in secret locations, sent secret telegraphic messages to the party from their bedrooms at midnight, and assassinated traitors and enemies with silent handguns. I and millions of others grew up watching such films, long before James Bond movies were allowed into China. For years, being a Communist was almost synonymous with being a secret agent. When my father joined the Communist Party, I was disappointed that he was nothing like the mysterious Communist spies I saw in movies.

In hindsight, our childhood impressions of the Communist Party are probably fairly close to truth. Sixty years after the Chinese Communist Party took power, it still conducts business like an underground
organization in enemy-occupied territories. All the key Communist Party organs, such as the Central Organization Department, the Central Propaganda Department, and the Central International Liaison Department, operate in office buildings without signs, without street numbers or listed phone numbers. Major decisions are made in closed-door meetings. Senior leaders act like members of the mafia, mysterious and secretive. Any personal information about them is considered a state secret. In September 2012, the then vice president Xi Jinping reportedly hurt his back and disappeared from public view for two weeks without explanation. The Party Central Committee refused to divulge any details, triggering wild speculations that there might have been a coup.

In the case of Bo Xilai, any information relating to his investigation is considered top secret. The public has no idea where he is being detained or how he is being interrogated. In April 2012, the government announced only that he is being investigated by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, which is headquartered inside a nameless office complex at 41 Pinganli Avenue in Beijing. What kind of organization is the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection? Many Chinese have heard it mentioned frequently in the state media, but few understand how it works.

The Chinese leadership, in its desperate effort to maintain the monopoly of the Communist Party, relies on an internal anticorruption organization—specifically the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, with a network of branches extending to the township level—to monitor the conduct of some 80 million party members, or 16 percent of China’s 1.3 billion people. The commission has eight divisions, the first four of which handle corruption offenses among party members above the vice-ministerial level within the central government or party organizations; the rest handle graft among those of vice-governor level or higher in different regions.

Without a regular open channel for the media and the public to supervise the party, the commission depends heavily on tips and clues provided by petitioners and anonymous whistle-blowers. A recent state media report said nearly half of the cases under investigation
were based on tips or anonymous reports. Other important sources come from instructions by the top leaders or petitions or complaints sent to high-level party organizations, and legislative and judicial bodies.

Since the late 1980s, as corruption within the party has become more rampant, the party has actively promoted the role of the commission, giving it more power to discipline corrupt leaders and rank-and-file members. Thus, the commission has established an unassailable position. The judiciary and law enforcement agencies have given up some of their legal responsibilities to the commission. Criminal investigation used to be a key job for the prosecution organ, but the commission has taken over the initial investigation and prosecutors simply coordinate cleaning up the postmortem work.

During an investigation, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection employs a practice known as
shuanggui
, or “double regulations.” The accused will be taken to a secret place for a specific period of time for harsh interrogation. This practice allows the commission to intervene before a judicial investigation begins. Sometimes investigators detain a suspect at a place away from his or her home or workplace to avoid the suspect’s access to his or her own network of power, influence, and connections in a particular area. Analysts say the secrecy is intended to shield the public from details that might harm the party’s image and to limit collateral damage to those higher up the chain of command. Investigations of officials above vice-ministerial levels are approved by the Politburo, which deliberates on the allegations first. This means that by the time the official is pulled into the system, he or she is already considered guilty by the Politburo. Therefore, few emerge unscathed, if they emerge at all. The state media said that between 1999 and 2009, the court convicted more than 100 senior officials due to the commission’s investigations. Among them, eight were executed and twenty received a suspended death penalty or life imprisonment. There is a popular phrase among senior officials, “I am not afraid of God, neither am I afraid of ghosts, but I am afraid of being summoned to talk to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.” Some, including the former deputy mayor of Beijing, had
committed suicide or died under mysterious circumstances before they were detained.

During detention, the accused are subject to harsh interrogations. Once investigators obtain a satisfactory confession, detainees are often stripped of their leadership positions and party membership, and their cases are handed over to government prosecutors for summary trials, which are closed to the public. Since 1992, the commission’s investigations have led to the fall of several senior leaders, including the deputy party chief of Sichuan province, the vice president of the Supreme People’s Court, the railway minister, the deputy party secretary of Shandong province, and the assistant director at the Ministry of Public Security.

But in the eyes of ordinary Chinese who have been victimized by rampant government corruption, the commission stands as their only hope for justice.

Even though the party produces impressive statistics on the commission’s work, few observers believe corruption is being systemically addressed. Corruption occurs because of the lack of transparency in the system. Ironically, anticorruption works the same way. In the past few years, the commission has emerged as a monster that is growing in size, placing itself above the judiciary and obstructing China’s efforts to build the rule of law. Mo Shaoping, a well-known human rights lawyer in Beijing, said the commission’s double regulation practice violates the Chinese constitution:

       
The law stipulates that no organization has the right to restrict a citizen’s freedom without the approval of the court, but the Commission places itself above the law. Communist Party members or government officials are citizens and the law should apply here.

When a major case involving a senior leader is assigned, the commission, with permission from the Politburo, organizes a special team of several hundred people to conduct investigations, turning itself into the most authoritative law enforcement and judicial organ. In Bo’s case, the commission reportedly dispatched two big teams, one to
Dalian and the other to Chongqing. In addition, smaller groups traveled to Hong Kong and Guangzhou to collect evidence relating to Bo’s family finances. The commission’s investigation is not part of the judicial process, but takes precedence over any other legal proceedings. During the double regulations process, members of the commission can enlist the help of public security agents and armed or traffic police. Nobody dares disobey. The commission has access to stacks of court subpoenas, detention permits from the Public Security Ministry, arrest warrants from the prosecutor’s office, and auditing permits from the taxation department. It has the authority to detain, collect evidence, and dictate how a target will be punished. The judicial system is a mere prop in its activities. Upon the completion of the investigation, the commission denies the court any independence by imposing its own sentencing recommendation.

On May 29, 2007, Zheng Xiaoyu, director of the National Food and Drug Administration, was tried for dereliction of duty after he allowed counterfeit drugs to enter the market. Dereliction of duty carries a maximum sentence of seven years, but the committee, which investigated Zheng first, recommended the death penalty to appease public anger. The court acquiesced and found him guilty of corruption—because he accepted bribes—and dereliction of duty, and duly sentenced him to death.

Often, it appears the commission has more power than the Supreme People’s Court, which reviews all death sentences imposed by the lower courts to ensure that the punishment fits the crime. In the name of anti-corruption and in the rigorous pursuit of “truth,” Chinese legal experts say, the commission detains the accused for long periods of time and denies the person access to a lawyer or due process. Even though Chinese law explicitly prohibits the use of torture during interrogation, it does not recognize the right to remain silent. Forced confessions and torture are common.

Li Heping, another Beijing-based lawyer, said the commission resorts to torture more than other judicial organizations do. Moreover, it ignores the presumption of innocence, the most important symbol of human rights protection in modern criminal law. Thus, a person under investigation has no right to hire a lawyer and yet the
confessions obtained by any means during the investigation can be used as evidence in court.

The regional version of the commission has now become a very important tool used by local leaders to eliminate their opponents. There are incidents where a new provincial leader has taken over a new assignment, but had problems controlling subordinates who resist his leadership. Under such circumstances, the new leader can fabricate petitions to the commission’s local branch, requiring investigation. Sometimes, when multiple people are competing for a spot in a midlevel government agency, the candidates backstab each other by writing petition letters, thereby eliminating their competition.

At the central level, the commission enforces the law selectively. An anticorruption investigation is a tool to protect the interests of a handful of senior leaders. One of the commission’s most important tasks is to filter out and if necessary remove any suggestion of impropriety that might be harmful to the senior leadership, or attack opponents, or protect certain privileged persons by warning and offering a way out of a potential political scandal. Those who are punished lack connections or are deemed to be of no political significance. Experts say this two-tiered approach, where some are favored over others, explains why corruption is endemic in China. It has been embedded in the political system. As mentioned before, under normal circumstances, any investigation relating to officials at the vice minister levels and above must be signed off by the Politburo. Members of the Politburo Standing Committee enjoy absolute immunity, because the threat of purges at the highest level would be too destabilizing.