In what may have seemed like a sudden, shocking move, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on Thursday sacked one of its most prominent and popular officials. However, anyone skilled at reading tea leaves would have seen the portents that Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai (薄熙來) was in trouble. Whether he is out for good, however, remains to be seen.
This was always going to be an edgy year for China-watchers, with the 18th CCP National Congress coming up later this year, and with it a major leadership transition. It has become much edgier with Bo’s sudden fall from grace, especially since so many assumed that he was destined for a higher position in that transition, almost certainly a spot on the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee.
The first indication that something was amiss was when Bo’s longtime right-hand man and police chief, Chongqing vice mayor Wang Lijun (王立軍), lit out for the US consulate in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, last month. Wang is now under investigation and his boss became tainted goods.
Up until then, the 62-year-old Bo had led something of a charmed life as the son of famed party elder Bo Yibo (薄一波) — if you exclude the decade or so that most of the family were imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution, when his father was tortured and his mother killed. Bo Xilai served as mayor of Dalian, governor of Liaoning Province and then took a job at the Ministry of Commerce before getting the Chongqing post. As a so-called “princeling” during and after the Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) era, Bo Xilai enjoyed a steady, if much more flamboyant than most, rise through the ranks.
Outsiders will have to wait and see whether Bo Xilai was ousted to take the flak for Wang’s disgrace, or whether he is facing problems for his own pro-Mao Zedong (毛澤東) state-led vision of socialism that featured lots of songs and slogans from the Mao era. Just last week, Bo Xilai told reporters in Beijing on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress that he was determined to reverse China’s rapidly escalating wealth gap. He was quoted as saying that “if a new capitalist class is created, then we’ll have really turned onto a wrong road.”
That may be a message that resounds for the millions who have been left out of China’s rapid economic transformation, but it must have sounded like heresy to the conservative, consensus-driven leadership that has evolved under Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), and looks set to continue under Hu’s heir apparent, Vice President Xi Jinping (習近平). Just hours after Bo Xilai’s sacking was announced, a speech Xi gave earlier this month praising party unity and warning against any behavior that could split the party was released.
The message that the folks in Zhongnanhai were not interested in a return to the roller-coaster days of Mao was apparently a message that Bo Xilai had been ignoring.
He admitted to reporters at that March 9 session that he had been blindsided by Wang’s consulate foray. His own downfall must have been even more of a shock.
This is not the first time that a top leader has been ejected; the history of the CCP and the People’s Republic of China has been filled with them. Some managed to revive themselves, some were killed and some were kept under house arrest until they faded from the public’s mind.
Whatever Bo Xilai’s ultimate fate, his abrupt toppling should serve as a reminder to Taiwanese of the vagaries of China’s closed political system and that nation’s lack of a democratic electoral system.
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