A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel (42 page)

Gao Yu, a journalist in Beijing, echoed similar sentiments. “The report gives one the impression that Bo has been committing evil deeds from the very beginning of his career,” she said. “If that was the case, how was it that he kept getting promoted? Who is lying here, the party or Bo Xilai?”

       
2.
  
Bo abused his p
ower, made serious mistakes, and bore major responsibility in the Wang Lijun incident and the murder of Neil Heywood.

The most striking charge in the report was to link Bo explicitly to the murder of Heywood, even though he was not referenced in the trial of Gu Kailai. Based on previous state media coverage, charges against Bo seemed to be largely based on the following: (a) At the end of December 2011, Bo illegally detained four police officers who had been assigned to investigate the Neil Heywood case and forced them to pledge that his wife was framed for murder. (b) When Wang Lijun notified him that his wife was a murder suspect, he sacked Wang from his police chief’s position and illegally detained three of Wang’s staff members for interrogation. (c) Bo allegedly plotted to have Wang killed, making it appear that Wang was mentally ill and had committed suicide. Until new evidence is presented at Bo’s trial, it is not clear if and how Bo was involved in the plotting and cover-up of Heywood’s murder. The charge further confirmed the speculation that Gu’s trial was a political conspiracy to criminalize and justify Bo’s ouster.

       
3.
  
Bo Xilai used his position to seek profits for others and took bribes either directly or through family members. His position was also abused by his wife, Gu Kailai, to seek profits for others.

How much money did Bo embezzle over the span of his political career? Before September 28, 2012, there were several figures online, from US $6 billion, claimed by a Japanese newspaper, to US $1 billion, as reported on Boxun. The Chinese-language service of Deutsch Welle stated Bo had taken bribes in the amount of nearly 100 million yuan, one-third of which was provided by his billionaire friend, Xu Ming.

Meanwhile, a Beijing-based analyst who had read the full investigative report submitted by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection listed the amount at 26 million yuan (US $4 million)—Bo accepted 6 million yuan directly and his family members took 20 million yuan on his behalf. This figure was later corroborated by the Hong
Kong–based
Ming Pao
newspaper, which was briefed by different sources in Beijing. After
Mingjing News
published the 26 million figure, a blogger with the alias “Chinese Injuries” wrote, “Only 26 million yuan? Bo Xilai is truly one of the cleanest officials in China. A county chief can easily embezzle that amount.”

Others suspected that the amount of bribes Bo took was much higher and that the government had reduced the number to mask the severity of corruption within the party and minimize damage to the party’s reputation. Since February 2012, there had been numerous stories about how his son lived a luxury life abroad—he attended elite schools that charged exorbitant tuition, and drove expensive cars. In addition, the Bo family supposedly owned a US $3.75 million apartment in London and another apartment that is being rented out at US $3,500-a-month in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Upon hearing about Bo’s embezzlement charges, a Chongqing resident dug out excerpts of Bo’s past speeches and posted them on the Internet. One excerpt was taken from his remarks at the press conference in March 2012: “The media have spread rumors about me and my family. In fact, my son, my wife, and I have no personal assets. It’s been like this over the past decade.” Another was from his inspirational quotes, which were widely distributed in Chongqing when he was party chief: “Integrity is a kind of happiness. A person lives a stress-free life if he is not greedy and doesn’t take bribes. He is at ease and focuses wholeheartedly on his work.”

A commentator on Voice of America remarked with sarcasm, “How can you not be touched by such noble teachings? On the same note, how much trust should we place on other senior leaders who are preaching similar messages?”

       
4.
  
  
Bo had or maintained improper sexual relationships with a number of women.

According to a source who had close ties with the Politburo, investigators presented a status report on Bo Xilai at a Politburo meeting on September 28, 2012. While chronicling in detail each bribe Bo and his family members had taken over the past two decades, the report also
described Bo’s “perverted lifestyle” and listed the names of women with whom Bo had had improper sexual relations. As expected, the “perverted lifestyle” description grabbed the most attention. “Nobody seemed to care how much money Bo Xilai had embezzled,” said the source. “Many members carefully perused Bo’s womanizing file, trying to figure out how ‘Erection Bo’ could do something that they were not capable of,” he joked.

The line “Bo had improper sexual relations with a number of women,” even though vague, also caught the imagination of the prurient and the curious public. Stories of Bo’s affairs—he gained the reputation of “Erection Bo” when he was still mayor of Dalian—had been around for many years. In 2005, a magazine in Hong Kong carried an open letter by a victim who accused Bo of “biting and bruising a model’s nipples” in the early 1990s. A recent report on
Dongsen News
alleged that two of Bo Xilai’s staff members had been assigned to arrange pretty young women to sleep with Bo. His womanizing continued when he moved to Chongqing in 2007 and Wang Lijun allegedly secretly recorded many of Bo’s trysts. Boxun reported that Bo slept with more than one hundred women and on several occasions, he allegedly pimped his “girlfriends” to his friends after he was tired of them.

Investigators identified twenty-seven of the one hundred women, many of whom were models, well-known actresses, anchors at CCTV, and pop singers.
Mingjing News
obtained a partial list on September 29 and published it with only their last names.

The Bo Xilai “mistress list” spread quickly on the Internet, causing panic among female celebrities whose last names happened to match the ones on the list. Several actresses and models declared on Sina Weibo that they never knew Bo and had never been to Chongqing. Xu Xin, a legal scholar in Beijing, told the Hong Kong–based
Apple Daily
that PR agents for several female celebrities were instructed to monitor Weibo and work to have posts mentioning their clients deleted posthaste.

Once again, rumors about Zhang Ziyi, star of
Memoirs of a Geisha
and
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
, resurfaced because her last
name was mentioned prominently on the list. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, Zhang’s lawyers lodged lawsuits in the US and Hong Kong against Boxun and
Apple Daily
in June 2012, after the outlets ran salacious reports about Zhang’s alleged encounters with Bo. On September 29, Zhang Ziyi lost her cool. On her Weibo, she wrote an angry note: “I have already responded to those who harbor ulterior motives five months ago. My response today is: ‘Go ask your mother. If she was there [with Bo Xilai], so was I.’”

Many political analysts I know were surprised that details of Bo’s sexual transgressions had been included in the official investigation report and listed as one of Bo’s offenses. In China, although wife-swapping or having private sex parties is considered a criminal offense, adultery is not. It is not clear from the official statement whether Bo had participated in any group sexual activities that could be considered “assembled imprudence.”

Liu Lu, an exiled Chinese lawyer in the US, believed the party had fanned the flames of the womanizing accusations with the sole intent of destroying Bo’s reputation and diminishing his popularity. Liu called the party’s practice despicable and hypocritical: “Womanizing is a common trait among senior Communist Party leaders,” Liu told
Mingjing News
. “In the modern era, movie studios and TV stations have become harems for party leaders. Why do they single out Bo? It’s quite obvious. The party tries to use Bo’s sexual misconduct to masquerade the true nature of his case—it is a power struggle.” A blogger named “Old Unemployed Peasant” agreed: “If you maintained a proper relationship with the party, your relations with numerous women would be proper. If you have lost favor with the party, your relationship with numerous women would be improper.”

       
5.
  
Bo has violated organizational and personnel disciplines and made erroneous decisions in the promotion of personnel, resulting in serious consequences.

When commenting on this charge, which obviously refers to Bo’s hiring and promotion of his former police chief, a professor at Beijing
University who refused to disclose his name during an interview on October 4, 2012, said sarcastically, “Bo Xilai is blamed for making erroneous personnel decisions. Then who should we blame for promoting Bo? When he was promoted from the mayor of Dalian to the minister of commerce and the party chief of Chongqing, did the leadership conduct any audits or background checks? How come they never found anything? Who should be held accountable for creating Bo, such a monster?”

       
6.
  
The investigation also uncovered evidence that suggests his involvement in other crimes.

This vague and yet all-embracing statement leaves the door open for prosecutors to add more charges later. For years Bo was known to be responsible for the deaths of two of his opponents when he was in Dalian and two of Wang Lijun’s staff members in January 2012. In addition, relatives of those who had been targeted during Bo’s anticrime campaign claimed that the Chongqing police had used torture to extract confessions and many innocent people had been executed on false charges. Analysts say these could all be dredged up if the other charges fail to convict Bo.

The Communist Party hailed the double expulsion as an illustration of its efforts to “rule the country in accordance with the law.” In announcing the charges against Bo, the senior leadership moved fast to clear the way for the high-profile trial. On October 25, ten days before the 18th Party Congress, China’s top legislature expelled Bo, stripping him of his legal immunity from criminal charges. The news raised false expectations that Bo could be on trial before the leadership transition on November 8, 2012, because President Hu Jintao was pressured to resolve the case before his imminent retirement. But the trial never materialized. News of intense power jockeying in the days leading up to the Congress, the Ling Jihua scandal, and the
New York Times
exposé of Premier Wen Jiabao’s hidden family wealth might have delayed the proceedings. “The party did not want any more distractions before the Congress,” said a source in Beijing. However, at a pre-Congress meeting, members of the party’s Central Committee ratified
Bo’s double expulsions, which finally put a period on Bo’s twenty-eight-year political career, even though he had not yet been convicted in court. With his party membership revoked, Bo’s chances of a comeback have become very remote.

Although the party declared the end of Bo’s political life, Wang Juntao, a prominent Chinese dissident in New York City, believes in the opposite. “The rampant corruption and widespread social injustices have generated discontent and hatred among the public,” said Wang. “Many saw Bo as their leader who dared challenge the status quo. They understand that Bo is no angel, but they still worship him because those who brought him down are more evil and despicable.”

Wang said Bo has been made a martyr, a banner and symbol of a potentially powerful political force: “The party has to address these legitimate concerns and give them a voice within the party. Suppression will only marginalize them, turning them into a lethal opposition force and a formidable political challenge.”

In October, nearly 400 activists, academics, and dissidents, some of whom didn’t even consider themselves in Bo’s corner, wrote an open letter to the National People’s Congress demanding that China’s legislature allow Bo to defend himself before lawmakers. “Whether Bo Xilai broke the law or not should be based on facts; we ask for openness and fairness,” the letter said. “If the legitimate rights of . . . former Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai . . . can be violated as if by lightning, then how much hope is there that the rights of ordinary citizens will be protected under the law?”

To Tie Liu, a writer and journalist who suffered tremendously during Mao’s anti-rightist campaign in the late 1950s, dismissed the open letter as a desperate stunt by leftists. “The open letter will only put more nails in Bo’s coffin,” he said. Tie Liu also felt Bo’s removal represented a significant step forward. “This is a triumph for those who support Deng Xiaoping’s open-door and economic policies,” he commented in an article online. “This is a triumph for those who promote freedom and democracy in China. The imprisonment of Bo will deliver a death blow to the rising Maoist group, marking China’s farewell to the ‘red’ disaster. I hope the country will start a new wave of reassessing Mao’s policies and uncovering the brutal truth about
Mao’s rule. At the same time, the fall of Mao will create a favorable condition for China’s political reforms.”

Tie Liu’s views were consistent with those of the party, but could go only so far. The news did not bring public cheers or raise the public’s hopes for the party. “Before a new king is crowned, a giant scapegoat has to be slaughtered as a sacrifice,” said Yang Haipeng, a well-known blogger and former reporter with
Caijing
magazine. A tweet by @penyuangzhong summarized the views of many: “Bo Xilai abused power and employed tyrannical means to get rid of his political opponents. In the end, a bigger tyrant came in and toppled him. It has nothing to do with reformists or Maoists. The Bo Xilai case shows that a power without checks and balances is corrupt; a power that is above criticism [is] shameless; a power without supervision [is] dictatorial.”

Lu Di, a UK-based political analyst, provided his straightforward answer: “Bo Xilai’s vaulting political ambition and his Chongqing model are seen as a threat and blatant attempts to seize power and split the party. For the leadership, that’s a cardinal sin.”