By Benjamin Kang Lim and John Ruwitch
BEIJING/SHANGHAI, Aug 28 (Reuters) – Senior figures in
China’s ruling Communist Party fear ousted politician Bo Xilai
could stage a political comeback one day if he is not dealt a
harsh sentence in his trial for corruption, embezzlement and
abuse of power, according to sources.
Bo was a rising star who analysts say was seen as a
potential rival to President Xi Jinping for leadership of the
Party and country before his career was spectacularly derailed
by a lurid murder scandal involving his wife.
Chinese courts are controlled by the Party and do not
generally dismiss its charges against defendants, especially in
politically-sensitive cases, so Bo will almost certainly be
found guilty.
But the unprecedented openness of his five-day trial,
approved by those at the top of the Party, may ironically limit
the ability of the court to mete out the tough sentence many of
those same leaders favour, analysts said.
“Bo is the biggest threat to Xi. If Bo is not executed or
does not die of illness, the possibility of Bo staging a
comeback one day cannot be ruled out,” a source with ties to the
leadership, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.
State broadcaster CCTV said a verdict was expected in early
September. The five-day trial closed on Monday.
China’s Communist Party has a rich history of purges and
rehabilitations, with perhaps none as spectacular as that of
Deng Xiaoping, architect of the market reforms that remade the
country.
Deng was ejected from government during the tumultuous
Cultural Revolution, but after Mao Zedong died in 1976 he
engineered a comeback and went on to rule as China’s paramount
leader for almost two decades until his own death in 1997.
FEISTY DEFENCE
In an unprecedented effort to show Bo’s trial was fair, the
Intermediate People’s Court in the eastern city of Jinan posted
near real-time updates of the proceedings on its microblog on
the Twitter-like Weibo platform.
There was evidence of some redactions but an observer in the
courtroom who also declined to be identified said the web
postings captured the essence of the trial, in which Bo denied
all wrongdoing and mounted a feisty defence that surprised many.
Bo stuck largely to addressing the charges and avoided
politics, a strategy that a second source with leadership ties
said consolidated his position as “China’s leftist leader” and
showed he was playing the long game.
“Bo is betting on political reform (one day) to make a
comeback,” the source said.
Much of the minutiae of the trial focused on how illicit
payments went to Bo’s wife and son, rather than directly to him.
In a poll on Weibo, more people who had a negative view of
Bo before the trial said their impression had improved than
those who said their impression of him had deteriorated by a
margin of about three-to-one. Of those who said they had a
positive impression to begin with, five-in-six said their view
became even more positive.
“From a common sense judgment there is no evidence against
Bo Xilai, and so the leadership’s dilemma is what to do,” said
Bo Zhiyue, a senior research fellow at the National University
of Singapore, who is not related to Bo Xilai.
“If you still want to sentence Bo Xilai you will lose
credibility saying this is a country of rule of law. But if you
let Bo Xilai go free, who can handle Bo Xilai as a free man?”
TIGERS AND FLIES
The 64-year-old former Party chief of the southwestern city
of Chongqing and one-time commerce minister cultivated a loyal
following through his charisma and populist, quasi-Maoist
policies.
His fall from power stemmed from accusations his wife, Gu
Kailai, had murdered a family friend, the British businessman
Neil Heywood, and that Bo had sought to cover it up after his
police chief reported his suspicions.
In the short term, a light sentence could undermine
President Xi’s pledge to go after corrupt political heavyweights
and lightweights respectively.
“If Bo is not executed, ‘tigers’ and ‘flies’ will not be
afraid of Xi and will not listen to him,” the first source with
leadership ties said, using Xi’s own metaphor for high-ranking
and low-ranking offenders.
But Bo, a “princeling” or “red aristocrat”, as the children
of China’s revolutionary leaders are termed, still has many
supporters and sympathisers in the Party, government and
military.
A Party source familiar with legal cases said former Railway
Minister Liu Zhijun and Bo’s wife Gu were spared capital
punishment, signs that Bo would not be given a death sentence.
“Liu Zhijun accepted more than 60 million yuan in bribes and
was way more corrupt than Bo,” the party source said, speaking
on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case.
Liu was given a suspended death sentence that typically
amounts to life in prison. Gu was convicted of poisoning Heywood
and also received a suspended death sentence last year.
Still, prosecutors argued for strong punishment because Bo
did not turn himself in, confess or inform against others.
“The danger is that they feel he had a bad attitude,” said
Gu Yushu, a lawyer appointed by Bo’s sister, Bo Jieying, but
ultimately denied permission to represent him in court.
“If you have a good attitude with respect to admitting to
the crimes they can, at their discretion, be lenient (in
sentencing), but if your attitude is bad then they don’t have an
opportunity to have that discretion to be lenient.”
AVOIDING MAJOR CHARGES
Even though Bo is widely seen as being a victim of political
infighting, the trial avoided politics altogether.
“The government was actively avoiding major charges and
pursuing trivial ones because they want to continue with some of
the policies that he espoused,” said Li Weidong, writer and
former editor who has followed the case closely.
“They are taking the ‘Bo Xilai Road’ without Bo Xilai.”
The trial’s published accounts made no mention of Bo’s
policies in Chongqing, notably his high-profile crackdown on
organised crime, which rights groups contend resulted in
terrible miscarriages of justice as Bo targeted his critics.
Many Chinese microbloggers appeared too distracted by the
much more salacious details of love triangles and expensive
foreign trips to wonder about the deeper politics of the case,
though censorship likely played a part in that, too.
“There’s lots of other illegal stuff they could have gone
after him for, like the crime crackdown in Chongqing,” said
prominent human rights lawyer Shang Baojun.
“It would have attracted too much unwanted attention. They
would not have wanted to go down that path.”
(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by
Alex Richardson)
