(Recasts lead)
By Chris Buckley and Benjamin Kang Lim
BEIJING, April 10 (Reuters) – China’s Communist Party has
banished the country’s brashest and most controversial
politician from its top ranks and detained his wife in
connection with the murder of a British businessman, the most
tumultuous upheaval in the nation’s leadership in decades.
The decision to cast out Bo Xilai from the party’s Central
Committee and its Politburo effectively ends the career of the
former high-flyer, widely seen as pressing for a top post in
China’s next leadership to be decided later this year.
The official Xinhua news agency confirmed a Reuters report
several hours earlier on Tuesday that Bo had been suspended from
his party posts, and separately reported that his wife, Gu
Kailai, was suspected in the murder of Briton Neil Heywood.
“Comrade Bo Xilai is suspected of being involved in serious
disciplinary violations,” said Xinhua, citing a decision by the
central party leadership to banish Bo from its top ranks.
“Police set up a team to reinvestigate the case of the
British national Neil Heywood who was found dead in Chongqing,”
the news agency said, referring to the sprawling southwestern
municipality where Bo was party chief until he was dismissed in
March as a scandal surrounding him unfolded.
It was the most dramatic convulsion in China’s secretive
leadership since 1989, when Jiang Zemin was plucked from
obscurity to head the Communist Party after the bloody crackdown
on democracy protests in Beijing.
Jiang replaced Zhao Ziyang, who was toppled by hardliners
for supporting the student movement centered on Tiananmen Square
that was crushed by the army with heavy loss of life.
Xinhua said evidence indicated Heywood’s death was a
homicide and Gu Kailai and Zhang Xiaojun, an assistant in Bo’s
household, were “highly suspected.” It cited a dispute over
unspecified “economic interests” between Gu and Heywood that
“constantly intensified”.
Gu and Zhang had been “handed over to the judicial
authorities”, it said – meaning they have been detained.
The Central Committee is a council of about 200 full members
that meets about once a year and the Politburo is a more
powerful body of about two dozen Central Committee members.
The announcements are the latest twist in a furore over Bo
and his family that erupted after his vice mayor, Wang Lijun,
fled to a U.S. consulate for 24 hours in February, alleging that
Gu was involved in Heywood’s death.
The Communist Party is grappling with the volatile scandal
months before it unveils a new line-up of leaders, a group Bo
once yearned to join.
Bo’s ouster has sparked public contention and revealed
friction among China’s leaders, pitting reformist Premier Wen
Jiabao against conservative officials who sources have said were
dismayed by the upheavals months before the party congress that
anoints the new leadership.
There were even outlandish rumours of an attempted coup.
“(This) appears to represent the top leadership finally
reaching an agreement that it must be seen to hang together in
the run-up to the leadership succession, in order to put an end
to the many wild speculations surrounding the Bo case,” said
Steve Tsang, a professor of Chinese studies at Nottingham
University in Britain.
After the announcements, the People’s Daily, the chief
mouthpiece of the Communist Party, told officials and citizens
to unite around President Hu Jintao. Hu retires at the end of
the year, when Vice President Xi Jinping is almost certain to
succeed him as China’s top leader.
CHONGQING RESIDENTS “STAGGERED”
Sharply dressed in a party of stolid conformists, Bo arrived
in Chongqing in 2007 and promoted the city as a bold egalitarian
alternative to China’s current pattern of growth. As the
“princeling” son of a revolutionary leader, Bo had added claim
to speak on behalf of the party’s traditions.
But his promotion of Mao Zedong-inspired “red” culture and
sweeping crackdown on organised crime prompted fears that he
risked reviving some of the arbitrary lawlessness of the
Cultural Revolution in the 1960s – a criticism that Premier Wen
Jiabao laid before the public in mid-March.
“This is so dramatic, so extraordinary,” said Li Zhuang, a
Beijing lawyer who was once jailed in Chongqing for challenging
Bo’s campaign against organised crime.
“If, and I stress if, there are real proven links to
Heywood’s death, then we can imagine that Gu and Bo Xilai will
find out that, as Chinese television has said about this, nobody
is above the law.”
Any criminal investigation of Bo would only begin after the
party’s disciplinary agency investigated him and decided whether
to turn his case over to police and prosecutors, said Li.
“This means that Bo’s political career is effectively over,”
Chen Ziming, an independent political scholar in Beijing, said
before the announcement, citing rumours of Bo’s suspension.
The decision to suspend Bo from the party’s top bodies does
not mean he has been expelled from the party.
Unlike past removals of defiant leaders over corruption
charges, Bo’s downfall has been tinged by ideological tension
and triggered open opposition from leftist sympathisers who have
insisted he is the victim of a plot.
Residents of Bo’s former power base, Chongqing, were shocked
on hearing the news, said Zhang Mingyu, a businessman in the
city who has accused Bo of using his crackdown on organised
crime to stifle critics and legitimate business.
“In Chongqing, everybody is up and discussing this and
waiting for more news,” Zhang told Reuters late in the evening.
“The ordinary residents are staggered. Many didn’t think the
rumours could be true. They want to know what the hell has been
going on.”
UK GOVERNMENT WELCOMES INVESTIGATION
Wang’s flight to the U.S. consulate and his allegations
prompted the British government to urge an investigation into
the death in November of the Briton, Heywood, who Wang said was
close to Bo’s family and had a dispute with Bo’s wife, Gu.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said he welcomed
China’s announcement of an investigation into Heywood’s death.
Bo, 62, and his wife, formerly a powerful lawyer, have
disappeared from public view since his removal as chief of
Chongqing, and they have not responded publicly to the reports.
Nor has Wang, who is under investigation.
The government said Heywood was once “on good terms” with Gu
and Bo Guagua, the couple’s son who went to the British private
school Harrow, where Heywood also studied. Bo Guagua has been
studying at Harvard University and he earlier won a reputation
for partying at Oxford University.
Bo Xilai vowed to narrow the gap between rich and poor,
kindling hopes among supporters that he could push the nation in
a left-populist direction if he joined the central leadership.
At a news conference days before his dismissal as Chongqing
party chief, Bo scorned as nonsense unspecified accusations of
misdeeds by his wife and said unnamed people were pouring “filth
on my family”.
Bo’s hopes for surviving the scandal were probably fatally
wounded by his unabashed ambition, which irked many officials,
said a source close to Bo and other leaders, speaking to Reuters
before the announcements.
“His advantage was his confidence, but his disadvantage was
that he was too confident,” said the source, who spoke on
condition of anonymity. “The signs are that he’ll face trial.”
(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard and Don Durfee; Editing
by Don Durfee, Brian Rhoads and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
