Bo Xilai
Bo Xilai is a Chinese former politician who was convicted on bribery and embezzlement charges. He came to prominence through his tenures as Mayor of Dalian and then the governor of Liaoning. From 2004 to November 2007, he served as Minister of Commerce. Between 2007 and 2012, he served as a member of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party and Party Secretary of Chongqing, a direct-administered municipality under the central government. He was generally considered the main political opponent of Xi Jinping before Xi became the party's General Secretary in 2012.
The son of former Chinese Vice Premier Bo Yibo, he was regarded as a princeling but cultivated a casual and charismatic public image, marking a notable departure from Chinese political convention. In Chongqing, Bo increased spending on welfare programs and maintained consistent double-digit GDP growth, while launching a crackdown on organized crime and promoting Cultural Revolution–style “red culture.” His “Chongqing model” gained popularity among the Chinese New Left, composed of both Maoists and social democrats disillusioned with the country's opening up policy and increasing economic inequality. However, his lawless campaigns, rising personality cult, and the dissonance between his family life and egalitarian rhetoric made him a controversial figure.
Bo was considered a likely candidate for promotion to the CCP Politburo Standing Committee at the 18th Party Congress in 2012. However, his political fortunes came to an abrupt end following the Wang Lijun incident, in which his top lieutenant and police chief sought asylum at the American consulate in Chengdu. Wang claimed to have information about the involvement of Bo's wife Gu Kailai in the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood, a confidant of the Bo family. In the fallout, Bo was stripped of his positions and expelled from the party. In 2013, Bo was found guilty of corruption, stripped of all his assets and sentenced to life imprisonment at Qincheng Prison.
Family background
Bo Xilai's father was the Communist revolutionary Bo Yibo, one of the Eight Great Eminent Officials, who served as Minister of Finance in the early years of the People's Republic of China but who fell from favor in 1965 for supporting more open trade relations with the West. When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, Bo Yibo, labeled a "rightist" and "counterrevolutionary", was purged from his posts and spent the ensuing twelve years in prison. Bo Xilai's mother, Hu Ming, was abducted by Red Guards in Guangzhou, and was either beaten to death or committed suicide.Bo Yibo had seven children. Aside from his eldest daughter, Bo Xiying, born to his first wife, Li Ruming, the rest were born to his second wife, Hu Ming. They are: eldest son Bo Xiyong, second son Bo Xilai, third son Bo Xicheng, fourth son Bo Xining, second daughter Bo Jieying, and youngest daughter Bo Xiaoying. Except for Xiaoying, a historian at Peking University, Bo Xilai's other siblings are active in politics and business. As of 2012, reports estimated the Bo family's total assets were worth between $136 million and $160 million.
Early life
Bo Xilai was seventeen years old when the Cultural Revolution began, and at the time attended the prestigious Beijing No. 4 High School. In the early years of the Cultural Revolution, Bo Xilai is reported to have been an active member of the liandong Red Guard organization and may have at one point denounced his father.As the political winds of the Cultural Revolution shifted, Bo Xilai and his siblings were either imprisoned or sent to the countryside, and Bo Xilai was locked up for five years. After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, the chaos of the Cultural Revolution was officially attributed to the Gang of Four, and Bo's father was released. Bo Yibo was politically rehabilitated, and, in 1979, became vice premier.
After his release, Bo Xilai worked at the Hardware Repair Factory for the Beijing Second Light Industry Bureau. He was admitted to the Peking University when the gaokao was reinstated in 1977. Unlike many of his contemporaries in the Chinese leadership who studied engineering, Bo majored in world history. In his second year at Peking University, after the graduate school examination was reinstated, Bo was admitted to a master's program in international journalism at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, allegedly through backdoor channels despite not meeting the required exam scores, and graduated with a master's degree in 1982. He joined the Communist Party in October 1980.
Early career
During the 1980s, the Bo family regained its political influence. Bo Yibo served successively as vice premier and vice-chairman of the Central Advisory Commission. The elder Bo came to be known as one of the "Eight Elders" or "Eight Immortals" of the Communist Party and was instrumental in the implementation of the reform and opening up in the 1980s. Although he favored more liberal economic policies, the elder Bo was politically conservative, and endorsed the use of military force against demonstrators during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. After the 1989 crackdown, Bo Yibo helped ensure the ascent of Jiang Zemin to succeed Deng Xiaoping as the leader of the Party and helped Jiang consolidate power in the 1990s. Bo Yibo remained a prominent figure in the party until his death in 2007 and was influential in shaping his son's career.After the graduate school, Bo Xilai was assigned to Zhongnanhai, where he worked with the research office of the CCP Central Committee Secretariat and CCP Central Committee General Office. In the early 1980s, Bo requested a transfer away from Beijing, a move masterminded by his father for both political and personal reasons. Politically, Bo, inspired by the protagonist Li Xiangnan in the popular Chinese television drama New Star —adapted from a novel partly based on Xi Jinping, then-deputy party secretary in Zhengding County, Hebei—aspired to gain grassroots experience and credentials to climb the CCP's political ladder. Personally, Bo was engaged in a four-year legal battle to divorce his first wife, Li Danyu, which was finalized in 1984. Facing persistent complaints and petitions from Li, who jeopardized his career by publicly accusing him of having an extramarital affair with his Peking University schoolmate Gu Kailai, Bo relocated to Dalian to avoid the controversy.
Dalian and Liaoning
Dalian
In 1984, Bo was appointed deputy party secretary of Jin County, now Jinzhou District of Dalian, where Cui Ronghan, an old comrade-in-arms of Bo Yibo, was the municipal party secretary. Bo subsequently became deputy secretary and then secretary of the party committee of the Dalian Economic and Technological Development Zone and secretary of the Jinzhou party committee. Rising again in rank within the party, he became a member of the Standing Committee of the Dalian Municipal CCP Committee, the city's top decision-making body, and became the Vice-mayor of Dalian in 1990. In 1993, Bo became deputy party secretary and mayor of Dalian. He remained mayor until 2000. Bo served as Dalian's deputy party secretary from 1995. Bo was promoted to CCP Committee Secretary in 1999 and served in that position until 2000.Bo's tenure in Dalian was marked by the city's phenomenal transformation from a drab port city to a modern metropolis, a 'showcase' of China's rapid economic growth. In the early 1990s, Bo took some credit for the construction of the Shenyang-Dalian Expressway, China's first controlled-access freeway, winning accolades for the rapid expansion of infrastructure and for environmental work. Since Bo's time in office, Dalian became known as one of the cleanest cities in China, having won the UN Habitat Scroll of Honour Award in 1999. In addition, Bo was an advocate for free enterprise and small businesses, and successfully courted foreign investment from South Korea, Japan, and Western countries. In contrast to his colleagues, he held press conferences during the Chinese New Year, and developed a reputation among foreign investors for "getting things done".
Bo spent seven years in the city of Dalian, a lengthy term in comparison to colleagues of the same rank, who often transferred to different locales throughout their careers. Despite the accompanying economic growth and rise in living standards, Bo's tenure in Dalian has sometimes been criticized as having been too focused on aesthetic development projects such as expansive boulevards, monuments, and large public parks. To make way for his large-scale projects, Bo's administration moved large numbers of local residents from downtown areas into new homes in the city's outskirts. Dalian's greenery was dubbed "Xilai Grass". He also had a huabiao built. In 2000, Bo was frontrunner for the post of Mayor of Shenzhen, based on his success in making Dalian the "Hong Kong of the North". However, it was suggested that Bo was too independent and outspoken for the post. The post went to Yu Youjun instead.
15th Party Congress
During the 15th Party Congress in 1997, Bo Xilai's family launched an unsuccessful campaign to secure his promotion to the Central Committee of the CCP. Although nepotism was generally frowned upon in China, Bo Yibo's ambitions for his son were well known. Bo Yibo suggested that the families of revolutionary elders should "contribute one child" to become high officials; Bo Xilai was selected as his family's "representative" over his older brother Bo Xicheng, for Xilai's superior academic credentials, which included attendance at the elite Peking University and a CASS master's degree.To secure Bo Xilai's promotion at the 15th Party Congress, his family launched a nationwide campaign to publicize his "achievements" as mayor of Dalian. They commissioned author Chen Zufeng to pen a report portraying Bo as a man who is "as statesman-like as Henry Kissinger, as environmentally conscious as Al Gore, and almost as beloved by the public as Princess Diana." Despite the publicity campaign, Bo Xilai failed to even gain a seat in the Liaoning provincial delegation to the Party Congress. Bo Yibo instead helped him gain a seat with the Shanxi delegation.
Bo Xilai failed to win a promotion, placing second-last in the confirmation vote for membership in the 15th CCP Central Committee and suffering a major political embarrassment. Bo's failure to get elected was attributed to a general opposition to nepotism within the Party. Moreover, during his tenure in Dalian, Bo incurred resentment for the 'special favours' that he procured for the coastal city at the expense of the rest of the province. His perceived partisan interests locked Bo's kin in a factional struggle against Li Tieying, one of China's central leadership figures, who may also have created obstacles to his promotion.