The Chinese Communist Party has just done something it hates to do: hang its dirty laundry out in public. With a level of force and lurid color that surprised just about everyone who pays attention to these things, on Friday the Party ended the greatest guessing game in Chinese politics by unveiling the charges against the once-golden politician Bo Xilai. In the months since April, when Bo became the center of the greatest Chinese scandal in decades, the question about the fate of the sixty-two-year-old former Party Secretary of Chongqing has been clear: Would the Party treat him with a light touch in order to minimize disruption to the balance of power, or would it make a public example of its willingness to punish those whose actions risk the whole enterprise? Ultimately, the Party chose the latter, and in spectacular fashion.
China could have charged Bo with the political equivalent of a misdemeanor—deciding, for instance, that the accusations against him would be handled inside the Party or in court with minimal charges, as some analysts had predicted. Instead, it’s throwing the book at him. According to the announcement of the charges, Bo “abused his power, made severe mistakes, and bore major responsibility” for the attempted defection of a powerful police chief and the murder of a British businessman (a crime for which his wife was convicted). In other words, the state is saying that he had a hand in killing or covering up the killing of a foreigner, and that he failed to prevent a bearer of secrets from attempting to flee.
There’s more: “He took advantage of his office to seek profits for others and received huge bribes personally and through his family. His position was also abused by his wife, Bogu Kailai, to seek profits for others, and his family thereby accepted a huge amount of money and property from others.” In today’s China, what is a “huge amount”? Well, Bloomberg figured that Bo’s in-laws had more than a hundred million dollars in assets. And those are the ones we know about. “Bo had affairs and maintained improper sexual relationships with a number of women.” Plural? The émigré journalist Jiang Weiping has estimated that Bo had somewhere around a hundred mistresses. In conclusion, and in a statement that is hard to argue with, the announcement said, “Bo’s behaviors have brought serious consequences, badly undermined the reputation of the Party and the country, created a very negative impact at home and abroad, and significantly damaged the cause of the Party and people.”
He will go to court; the date is unclear, but it might be before the major Party confab on November 8th—and it will be the biggest show trial in China since the Gang of Four was sent to jail after the Cultural Revolution. But some of the most interesting questions are already clear:
• Why come down so hard on him? Those who keep the box scores on Chinese politics will be seeking to figure out who drove this case to its dramatic conclusion. For a government that is roundly regarded as diffused in its power, this was a show of solidarity and authority that suggests some fight in the muscles of one arm or the another. Some will interpret this as a win for reformers, and a defeat for leftists, but I would be cautious about overstating the long-term impact.
• Bo is also accused of having “made wrong decisions in personnel promotion, which led to serious consequences.” Will this focus attention on the supremely sensitive fact that China’s vaunted meritocracy is breaking down? At a time when offices and promotions are for sale more blatantly than at any time since the revolution, this case could force the question of how it might be repaired.
• The investigation also “found clues to his suspected involvement in other crimes,” so what else is there? Over the past six months, we have heard of a range of other alleged wrongdoing: that Bo “wanted to establish a politically independent ‘kingdom’ in Chongqing, bugged the conversations of other leaders, and used terror and torture in his anti-crime campaigns,” as the politics-watcher Cheng Li has put it. Will these charges—especially the bugging of other leaders—be aired in court?
• Last, and most interesting to me: How much of Bo’s political history will eventually be open to discussion? One of the biggest surprises in these charges is that the Party didn’t confine its attention to the dramatic events of this spring and declare victory. On the contrary, they harkened back to virtually his full political career, accusing of him impropriety as early as his posts in Manchuria, where he was first stationed in 1984. That’s a quarter century of opportunities, and for years, Bo was said to have been involved in corruption. But nobody ever thought he would be prosecuted for it, not any more than they think that the other members of the Politburo who are routinely subject to rumors about corruption will ever see a day in court.
And therein lies the powder keg at the center of the Bo Xilai case. In seeking to purge him with a finality that can restore short-term political balance, the Party may have raised a more dangerous spectre: the full-scale accounting of a life in government. The results could reveal a culture of self-dealing and personal enrichment that exceeds even the Chinese public’s considerable tolerance of official abuse. It may start a conversation that will be hard to end.
Photograph by Feng Li/Getty.
