Once a rising political star famous for busting gangs and reviving Maoism, China’s Bo Xilai suffered another blow on Sunday as the ruling Communist party formally expelled him, paving the way for a criminal trial.
The charismatic 63-year-old had been tipped for promotion to China’s top decision-making body at a once-a-decade power handover this month — until a key aide fled to a US consulate in February with the explosive claim that Bo’s wife had murdered a British businessman.
That set off a cascade of events which led to a murder conviction for his wife Gu Kailai in August and the jailing of his aide Wang Lijun the next month for attempting to cover up the crime.
China announced in September that Bo would “face justice” for charges including abuse of power and corruption. Last month he was stripped of his parliament seat and legal immunity.
Expulsion from the party was another prerequisite for him to stand trial, but analysts have said the hearing may be postponed to avoid disrupting the sensitive leadership transition at a party Congress that opens on Thursday.
Bo, a former commerce minister, was known for his suave and open demeanour, seen as refreshing in a country where leaders are often rigid and emotionless in public.
But his open lobbying for promotion, coupled with his “princeling” status as the son of a hero of China’s revolution, irritated some fellow politicians.
“He’s very open, very confident, very charismatic and that’s not the way most Chinese leaders behave and that is not the way they feel comfortable with their peers behaving,” said Patrick Chovanec, a professor at Tsinghua University.
Bo’s revival of “red” culture in the southwestern municipality of Chongqing — including sending officials to work in the countryside and pushing workers to sing revolutionary songs — drew both accolades and concern.
He also set about fighting graft when he came to power in Chongqing, in a crackdown that saw scores of officials detained and executed and their lurid secret lives exposed.
But behind Bo’s smiling demeanour lurked the tragedy of his teens during the Cultural Revolution, a decade of deadly chaos launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 in which students turned on teachers and officials were purged.
Bo’s father Bo Yibo was a revolutionary who fell from grace and was imprisoned and tortured during the turbulent period. His mother was beaten to death and Bo Xilai himself spent time in a labour camp.
But when Mao died and reformist leader Deng Xiaoping eventually took over, Bo Yibo was rehabilitated and became one of the most powerful men in China, bestowing on his son an impeccable family pedigree that long protected him.
Bo took a master’s degree in journalism — an educational background that stands out in the crowd of engineers and scientists who make up China’s political elite.
For nearly two decades from 1985, he was based in China’s northeastern rustbelt, first as mayor of Dalian, a decaying port city that he is credited with transforming into a modern investment hub.
He then became governor of Liaoning province where Dalian is located, and in 2004 entered the Beijing limelight as China’s commerce minister, dazzling foreign counterparts with his modern, can-do attitude.
“He was a reformer and wanted to see things change,” said David Zweig, a Chinese politics expert at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
During that time, Bo hosted many foreign visitors including EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, with whom he appeared to be on genuinely friendly terms.
Outside observers said his move to Chongqing, a metropolis of more than 30 million, would propel him out of the limelight. But his anti-mafia and Maoist revival campaigns proved them wrong.
However, those who had praised Bo as relatively liberal soon grew disillusioned — particularly with his corruption crackdown, which many say was carried out with contempt for the law.
Bo is thought to have spent the last several months under house arrest as the drama involving his wife Gu’s murder of British business Neil Heywood played out.
Bo Xilai: China's fallen political star
