A power struggle between disgraced former Chongqing Communist Party secretary Bo Xilai (薄熙來) and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) is a fight between “bad and worse” communists, a well-known Chinese dissident said.
In a Twitter post, Yu Jie (余杰) said the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) firing of Bo smacked of its purge of the “Gang of Four” in 1976, as it was done “not in accordance with normal procedure.”
“Where is Bo now? How is he? No official information at all — creating fertile ground for rumors,” Yu said.
In a country governed according to the rule of law, legal proceedings would be launched to deal with a senior official who had allegedly broken the law, but in China, the whole thing is done “in a black box,” according to Yu, a writer and close friend of jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波).
Media reports have quoted Yu as saying after being exiled to the US early this year that he was placed under surveillance and tortured in China. He is currently in Washington with his wife and son.
Yu said that in terms of -governance, China had made no progress over the past three decades, and that the power struggle between Bo and Wen was nothing but a fight between “bad and worse” leaders.
Wang Dan (王丹), a student leader during the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy movement, said that although Bo had been stripped of his position as Chongqing party secretary, that did not mean an end to his political career.
In a Facebook, post he likened recent developments to Act One of a play, in which the ruling clique and its associates join forces to put an end to a crisis that had the potential to adversely impact their common interests.
Wang is scheduled to have an online discussion with former Democratic Progressive Party chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) this weekend, during which he is expected to comment on the -political situation in China.
Meanwhile, the dearth of information about Bo’s situation has spawned a string of rumors.
“It’s a dog-eat-dog situation in which the one praising Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) leftist ideas has been defeated and is now being sent to the gallows,” according to an improvised folk song making the rounds in Beijing.
“During the 18th CPC Congress, the power brokers were engaged in internecine fighting. The losers went on vacation while the winners continued to be lords,” another says.
The losers in these two songs are Bo and his former deputy, Wang Lijun (王立軍), whose alleged ly attempt to defect at the US consulate-general in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, provided the catalyst for the latest drama.
Yu said if China did not change its habit of behind-the-scenes power struggles and embrace the rule of law, such rumors would remain a permanent feature of Chinese politics.
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