Geneva, 31 December 2004

Why Bo Stole the Show

Medical animator David Bolinsky presents 3 minutes of stunning animation that show the bustling life inside a cell.

Because in town this is the bustling squatter city of Kibera, near Nairobi they see action. They see opportunity.

It takes control of these cells, turns them into virus making factories, and they all burst, a huge, extended bacteria family, all dying with viruses spilling out of their guts, the viruses taking over the bacterium.

Unfortunately, Bo s case is not the exception in China, but the rule. Contrary to the prevailing perception in the West (especially among business leaders), the current Chinese government is riddled with clever apparatchiks like Bo who have acquired their positions through cheating, corruption, patronage, and manipulation.

STANFORD The recent trial of Bo Xilai highlighted the biggest challenge facing contemporary China the corruption and abuse of power by some government and party officials. Until his fall, Bo, a former Politburo member and party leader of Chongqing, a megacity of 30 million people, was a potential candidate for China s ruling seven member Politburo Standing Committee.

What was unusual about Bo was his open ambition. Chinese party bosses, like Japanese politicians or, indeed, Mafia dons are supposed to be discreet in their appetite for power.

Any stroll along a crowded Istanbul street will show covered and uncovered women effortlessly 45 45 almost naturally 45 45 mixing. Why then can t a similar sisterhood be achieved in the realm of politics?

There was no mention of Bo Xilai and what his dismissal meant for China s domestic politics in this critical year of leadership transition. While it is easy to get caught up in the swirling tales of palace intrigue that have followed, I suspect that Bo s removal holds a far deeper meaning.

Any stroll along a crowded Istanbul street will show covered and uncovered women effortlessly almost naturally mixing. Why then can t a similar sisterhood be achieved in the realm of politics?

The scandals surrounding the top aides to Lee nicknamed the Bulldozer from his career as a construction industry executive have complicated matters for the ruling Saenuri Party s candidate, Park Geun hye, and buoyed the hopes of her leftist rival, Moon Jae in of the Democratic United Party. Park is the daughter of former president, General Park Chung hee, who seized power in a military coup in 1961.

Twice upstaged, Clinton s discussions with China s leaders took place under the shadow not only of the Chen affair, but also of the recent purge of Bo Xilai from the Communist Party s senior leadership. Bo s ouster, the source of the greatest intra Party ruckus since the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989, is the sort of dirty linen that China s leaders never air in public.

This is the second report of the merged E4 Panel composed of Messrs. Robert R. Briner (Chairman), Alan J. Cleary and Jianxi Wang (the Panel ).

This is the third report of the merged E4 Panel composed of Messrs. Robert R. Briner (Chairman), Alan J. Cleary and Jianxi Wang (the Panel ).

When that individual falls, so must they. On the other hand, when he is riding high, they benefit, as was the case with many of Bo s relatives and his wife, whose businesses thrived while he was in power.

This has led to speculation that Chang s execution was retaliation, endorsed by Shenyang, for Bo s arrest and the ongoing purge of his supporters, including, most recently, Zhou Yongkang, the powerful former chief of internal security. In other words, what appeared to be a form of political military brinkmanship by Kim may actually be a manifestation of Shenyang s reaction to Xi s struggle to reassert Party authority over Bo s faction and its supporters in the military.

CLAREMONT, CALIFORNIA As show trials go, the drama featuring Bo Xilai, the once swaggering, media savvy former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chief of Chongqing, veered anomalously into improvisation. Before the proceedings began, the conventional wisdom was that Bo s trial had been carefully scripted and rehearsed to portray a forlorn and penitent sinner confessing his crimes and apologizing to the Party.

Yet this is the same state dominated development model that came under heavy criticism at this year s CDF and that stands in sharp contrast to the more market driven alternative that has gained broad consensus among senior Chinese leaders. In other words, Bo was perceived not only as a threat to political stability, but also as the leading representative of a model of economic instability.

In many ways, Bo personified the Chinese concept of meritocracy well educated, intelligent, sophisticated, and charming (mainly to Western executives). But, after his fall, a very different picture emerged.

Some claim that the local PLA commander initiated the stand off, while others contend that China s new president, Xi Jinping, was using the transgression to assert his authority over the PLA. The incursion has even been linked to the scandal surrounding Chongqing s disgraced former Communist Party chief, Bo Xilai, who had close ties with high ranking PLA and security services officers.

Bo may be heading to jail, but he retains some chance of political rehabilitation should things change dramatically in China. His botched but riveting trial may be over, but the Bo Xilai show will go on.

For example, visitors to Chongqing marvel at the soaring skyscrapers and modern infrastructure built during Bo s tenure there. But do they know that Bo s administration borrowed the equivalent of more than 50 of local GDP to finance the construction binge, and that a large portion of the debt will go unpaid?

However, just as the Chairman of the PyeongChang Organizing Committee for the 2018 Olympic Paralympic Winter Games, Lee Hee Beom predicted, As the Winter Olympic torch is carried and passed on across South Korea, interest in the Winter Olympics will rise. I believe that ticket sales will turn around very quickly .

Similarly, Cho s history of mental illness was widely discussed. Moreover, his mental health records were released to the public two years later, reviving the link between his crime killing 32 people and wounding 17 others before committing suicide and his mental illness.

SINGAPORE To the extent that culture matters in politics, the recent spate of leadership changes in Northeast Asia suggests that Asian societies are more tolerant if not supportive of dynastic succession. South Korea s recently elected president, Park Geun hye, is the daughter of Park Chung Hee, who ruled the country from 1961 to 1979.

Now, in the wake of Bo s fall from grace, and in light of the controversy over JPMorgan s hiring of Chinese princelings, Western academic and business leaders must ask themselves a tough question Do they want to be complicit in helping the Party perpetuate its hereditary rule?

Both her mother and her father, President Park Chung hee, were assassinated, in 1974 and 1979, respectively. Indeed, her father was murdered by his own intelligence chief, KCIA Director Kim Jaegyu.

But, apart from his sentimental wartime connections to Japan, his anti Communism was incentive enough to continue warm relations with the imperial power that had brutally colonized Korea for a half century. Park Geun hye, South Korea s current president, is his daughter.

Whispered reports are even more lurid. Zhou is said to have plotted to murder his first wife, and there are rumors that at the height of last year s scandal involving disgraced former Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai, he attempted to assassinate Xi in the leadership compound at Zhongnanhai.

That appears to be the case with the Bo Xilai affair in China. One enduring political myth that went down with Bo, the former Communist Party boss of Chongqing municipality, is the notion that the Party s rule is based on meritocracy.

Bo personified that risk. He embodied the so called Chongqing model of state capitalism that has been ascendant in China in recent years government directed urbanization and economic development that concentrates power in the hands of regional leaders and state owned enterprises.

At its thirtieth session, held on 14 16 December 1998, the Governing Council of the Commission appointed Messrs. Luiz Olavo Baptista (Chairman), Jean Naudet and Jianxi Wang as the second Panel of Commissioners charged with reviewing E4 claims (the E4A' Panel ).

The struggles for power within China s ruling Communist Party over the purge of Bo Xilai, and the blind activist Chen Guangcheng s escape from detention during economic talks with the US, have made Chinese leaders nationalist assertions even more strident than usual. No official wants to appear soft where China s supposed core interests are concerned.

China s prolonged and apparently contentious leadership transition, punctuated by the purge of Bo Xilai, suggests that its leaders ability to continue to manage the country s emergence as a great power is not entirely certain. That makes the absence of a widely accepted regional structure of peace all the more dangerous.

However, anyone who believes that the courtroom drama in the provincial capital of Jinan will determine the trial s outcome (the verdict and sentence will be announced in September) is seriously mistaken. The CCP s leaders have already decided that Bo is guilty and must spend years in jail (the scale of Bo s alleged bribe taking ensures a sentence of 15 20 years).

Based on what the Chinese press has disclosed thus far, it is clear that the Zhou case will be the ugliest and most sensational scandal involving a senior party leader that the country has ever seen. It will make Bo, an ally of Zhou and a former Politburo member who was sentenced to life imprisonment for corruption, look like a petty thief.

HONG KONG Before China s leadership transition earlier this year, experts said that the Chinese Communist Party was intent on preventing a larger than life personality from assuming power. The CCP, it was argued, wanted someone more like the bureaucratic outgoing leader, Hu Jintao, rather than a charismatic successor like, say, the former Chongqing provincial governor Bo Xilai.

So far, China has not unleashed the sort of mass demonstrations against Japan and others that it has used in the past to convey its displeasure. But that probably reflects the jittery state of China s leaders in the wake of the Bo purge they cannot guarantee that an anti Japan demonstration would not turn into an anti government protest.

Acclaimed as a national hero among radical right wingers, the iron fisted Park Chung hee ruled South Korea from 1963 to 1979, in the wake of the 1961 military coup, only to be assassinated by his intelligence chief. His daughter is proud of his legacy, which marked the beginning of South Korea s economic boom.

Since factional rivalry inside the Party cannot be handled discreetly, some of Bo s colleagues felt that he had to go. The way that party bosses, in China no less than in Japan, get rid of irksome rivals is to bring them down through public scandals, leaked to an obedient press, which then fans the flames.

CLAREMONT, CALIFORNIA China s princelings the offspring of senior Chinese officials who benefit from lavish privileges in education, employment, and business are coming under scrutiny as never before. Bo Xilai, the son of one of Mao s comrades and a supposed immortal of the revolution, was recently sentenced to life in prison after his conviction on charges of corruption and abuse of power.

The new lineup eliminated the most powerful voice on the left (Bo) and relegated the extreme reformers on the right (Li Yuanchao and Wang Yang) to the second tier. To reduce elders interference, Hu stepped down as head of the military and Jiang Zemin promised to step back.

The most likely interpretation is that those at the top no longer want to concede anything when it comes to stability. By addressing economic instability through pro consumption rebalancing, and political instability by removing Bo, stability has gone from a risk factor to an ironclad commitment.

The new government needs to take the pragmatic steps that can overcome the limitations of today s economic model and save the country from declining growth, higher unemployment, and rising inequality. The task is no less than to achieve South Korea s second miracle on the Han River.