China Policy Institute Blog
The Bo Xilai Scandal and China’s Intellectuals
November 29, 2012
by Giorgio Strafella. Sometimes one is so dazzled by China’s economic performance that one forgets how important ideas and ideology are for the CCP’s claim to legitimacy. While managerial merit is often invoked by the party’s eulogists, party leaders rely more on ideas than performance when arguing that they constitute the best possible ruling elite. …
Bo Xilai/Gu Kailai Saga: was the murdered Neil Heywood “freelancing” for MI6?
November 18, 2012
by Don Keyser. The Wall Street Journal reported in a November 6 article under Jeremy Page’s byline that Neil Heywood, the British expat businessman allegedly murdered by Chongqing Party Secretary/Politburo member Bo Xilai’s wife Gu Kailai, had been in touch for more than a year with an officer of Britain’s MI6. Page related that Bo …
Political reform an urgent task for the incoming leadership
October 19, 2012
by Anastas Vangeli Political reform has a very righteous, even a Confucian purpose in the Party’s discourse. The Party often conceptualizes the need for political reform as an answer to the growing “plagues” in governance. One of the most important of these plagues is corruption. The definition of corruption in China stretches far beyond only …
Bo Xilai – a deadly case of delusion and desired defection
April 27, 2012
By Mike Bastin. While the rumors continue about Bo, his wife Gu and the death of Neil Heywood, it is surprising that the real reason for this entire saga has not yet been publicized. The real reason is not that Bo was seen as a potential threat to the current and future leadership in China, …
Bo Xilai – The Plot Thickens
April 18, 2012
By Mike Bastin While we should all welcome the recent news of the re-investigation into the death of Mr. Neil Heywood, the British businessman who died under suspicious circumstances in November last year, it is also an opportune time to gain some understanding of the intense rivalry within at the top of China’s usually secretive …
Bo Xilai: Altruistic alchemist or ambitious anti-hero?
March 22, 2012
By Mike Bastin. It was Fabius Mximus, a Roman politician and General around 300 B.C, who appears to be the first to lay claim to change and progress via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. While there is more and more talk of the need, indeed urgent need, for structural political and economic change …
Politics behind the fall of Bo Xilai
March 16, 2012
By Steve Tsang. Bo Xilai is down, but is he out? No one outside the inner core of the Chinese Communist party leadership knows for sure. Perhaps even those inside do not yet know. The future of Bo, until Thursday the powerful party secretary of Chongqing, is still being decided. He has not lost membership …
Act Two: Bo Loses Job
March 15, 2012
By Zhengxu Wang. More than a month after the Chongqing Vice Mayor’s alleged defection attempt at the US Consulate in Chengdu (see an early China Policy Post here ), the other shoe of the drama has now fallen. Yesterday the Chinese Communist Party announced that Bo Xilai was removed from his post as the Party …
Chongqing’s Bo Feels the Pressure as Aide is Put Under Investigation
February 13, 2012
By Zhengxu Wang. On Tuesday, explosive news hit the internet in China concerning the vice mayor of Chongqing in China’s southwest and how he had sought asylum in the US Consulate in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, a three hour drive from Chongqing. Wang Lijun, the police chief of Chongqing who has led forceful …
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