A Chinese Murder Mystery_ by Ian Johnson

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A Chinese Murder Mystery?JUNE 7, 2012

Ian Johnson

Jason Lee/Reuters

Bo Xilai du ring the op enin g ceremon y of a con cert o f revolu tiona ry so ng s, Ch on gq ing, China , Jun e

29, 2011

Roughly every decade, China’s political system cracks, its veil is rent, and its inner

workings are laid bare. 2012, the Year of the Dragon, is turning out to be one of

those periods when the country’s high priests can’t quite carry out their rituals as

planned.

The disruption to China’s well-ordered political world was set off by the upcoming

18th Party Congress, when the current leaders, General Secretary Hu Jintao and

Premier Wen Jiabao, retire and are to be replaced by Xi Jinping as head of state and

the Party and Li Keqiang as premier. This will mark just the fourth handover of

power since Mao Zedong seized control in 1949 and the second time in a row that it

will have occurred—so far at least—peacefully. 1

On the surface, the problem is simple: these top leaders discovered in February that

they had a murderer in their midst. That person was Bo Xilai, a former Politburomember and Party secretary of Chongqing, whose wife, the lawyer Gu Kailai, is

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accused of being responsible for the killing of an Englishman, the financial

consultant Neil Heywood, who was rumored, without evidence, to have helped the

Bo family and others to send money out of China. He died on November 14, and it

has been speculated that he had gone to Chongqing to celebrate Gu’s birthday on the

following day. Just why and how he died remains a mystery, but according to the

still-sketchy story, 2 Bo helped his wife cover up Heywood’s murder, making him

an accomplice.

Some of the official story was reassuringly familiar: Bo is a bad apple, the kind of

person that every political system in the world can produce—a politician who

misused his office to save a family member from the law. But this version has one

major hole: Bo’s misdeeds only came out after his police chief, Wang Lijun, fled to a

US consulate in February and told American diplomats that Bo had done something

seriously wrong—in other words, it’s not as if the Party figured this out on its own.

But once the story was out, the Party quickly removed Bo and admitted he’dengaged in bad behavior. Bo and his wife face prosecution in connection with the

murder and will be punished in accordance with the law. End of story.

And yet it’s a narrative that few Chinese believe is so simple. Bo represented the

Party’s left wing, which is skeptical of some of China’s reforms and wants vigorous

action to counter the enormous, growing gap between rich and poor. Xi Jinping, by

contrast, represents middle-of-the-road reformers who acknowledge that problems

exist but offer vague, gradual solutions.

Extremely ambitious, Bo was already in the Party’s twenty-five-member Politburo

and aspired to join Xi in its even more exclusive nine-member Standing Committee,

which effectively rules China. Given his seniority, his influence among military

leaders, and his telegenic populist appeal, he would have been a formidable voice in

Xi’s new government, even if he hadn’t gotten onto the Standing Committee. His

promise as a politician led some leaders, according to credible reports, to oppose his

outright purge, arguing that he should have been given a face-saving retirement or ceremonial post.

These concerns explain why the Party’s main propaganda organs have been

apoplectically insisting that all is well. For much of April, the front pages of the

Party’s flagship People’s Daily were replete with accounts of the activities of each of

the Standing Committee’s nine members. The reports seemed to be saying: see, we’re

all here, all working together, and nothing is wrong. These articles have been

supplemented by editorials urging Party members and military officials to be loyal tothe state. The drumbeat has been so repetitive as to appear desperate—as if perhaps

some in the Party aren’t listening. Naturally, Chinese with any experience reading





Party newspapers pick up on these signals and can only come to one conclusion: that

the Party is disunited over Bo’s ouster and faces its biggest test in years.

One shouldn’t exaggerate the depth of the problem. Some have called this the

biggest political crisis in China since the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy protesters.

Technically, that might be accurate but it’s a bit like comparing this afternoon’s

shower with last year’s typhoon. Back in 1989, thousands of protesters controlled theheart of Beijing, the army removed them with violence, and the Party’s general

secretary was deposed. China was isolated and its entire reform program put on hold.

This year’s turmoil is far milder. Xi is still on schedule to take over from Hu, and

China’s policies appear unchanged.

But today’s China is also a far different place from the relatively poor, rural country

of 1989, just over a decade removed from the Cultural Revolution. Back then,

reformers relatively easily reestablished the Party’s legitimacy by reviving reformsand allowing the country to embark on an amazing twenty-year boom that lifted tens

of millions out of poverty, created a middle class, and urbanized the country—late

last year, for the first time in Chinese history, more people lived in cities than the

countryside.

These changes, however, have brought new actors and new demands. People such as

the blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng represent a new class of Chinese who want the

law to apply to all equally and are willing to challenge abusive local officials. TheParty recognizes the need for the rule of law and this is why central authorities had a

hard time condoning his illegal detention by local officials in Shandong province—

and why the government has been in a state of confusion over whether Chen should

be given a degree of freedom in China or allowed to go to the US.

For this growing number of politically conscious people, the arguments used against

Bo appear questionable. Besides the more formal allegation of accessory to murder,

Bo has also been criticized for corruption, trampling on civil rights to fightcorruption, and glorifying the Cultural Revolution by reviving public singing of “red

songs”—an attempt to restore the lost camaraderie and morale in Chinese society.

Critics of the current campaign against Bo concede that these points are valid but

make a broader and more damaging argument: Bo is the rule, not the exception.

Almost all of China’s top leaders have immensely rich family members; by these

standards, the Bo clan hardly stands out. As for civil liberties, in late April the

government’s chief law enforcement official flatly stated that the law must serve the

Party’s needs. And while red songs might appear crude, the Party’s answer is hardly

better: it recently launched a national campaign to revive morale by resurrecting Lei





Feng, a soldier who died when hit by a truck in 1962 and was made a Communist

hero of selflessness, an implausible figure widely mocked as a creation of Party

propagandists.

Discussing these issues in public, however, is impossible. The Party has blocked

many key search terms on social media sites and banned competing accounts. In late

April, the Party’s Xinhua news agency even launched an attack on foreign media for reporting rumors about Bo, as if lèse-majesté was a crime enforceable beyond

China’s borders.

To be fair, some of these foreign reports have been absurdly speculative. Articles

have appeared recounting private conversations between Bo and Wang, with no

explanation about how they are known. Others have suggested that Heywood was

linked to Western intelligence agencies, although this was quietly dropped when it

was found out that his car license plates included the numbers “007”—perhaps notexactly in keeping with his supposed MI6 connections.

The Party, however, hasn’t offered facts to back its own version of events. To date,

no one has even presented evidence that Heywood was murdered. Since he was

cremated shortly after his death, an autopsy appears to be out of the question, unless

one was secretly conducted beforehand and soon will be revealed. As for confessions

and eyewitnesses, the prevalence of torture and pressure in China’s criminal justice

system means that such evidence will have to be treated cautiously.

Even if we assume that Heywood was murdered, it’s still hard to understand Bo’s

role. One widespread claim is that he obstructed an investigation into Heywood’s

death and perhaps even had police officers tortured to hush it up. The theory is that

these efforts led to a split between Bo and Wang, leading Wang to flee to the US

consulate in Chengdu and tell the world about Heywood’s death.

Yet this has not been supported by any facts. It’s also not clear why Bo and Wang

would have feuded over Heywood’s death. By all accounts, Wang had willingly

been Bo’s hatchet man in Chongqing for years—having criminal bosses and their

government patrons arrested, tried in kangaroo courts, and executed. So why the fit

of conscience? China’s police force is a tool of the Party, so it’s hard to imagine a

Serpico-type cop standing up against the corruption, determined to find Heywood’s

murderer. This story about Wang as an upright policeman has been pushed by his

associates, such as the Chongqing intellectual Wang Kang, who also claims almost

psychic knowledge of Gu and Heywood’s states of mind. But such claims should be

treated skeptically until there is some clear evidence.





the violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests and subsequent ouster of

Party leader Zhao Ziyang. Jiang left on schedule in 2002, handing over to Hu and

Wen.

2. 2

A formal statement regarding Bo’s involvement—perhaps some sort of verdict—is

expected in the coming weeks.

3. 3

I contributed to a report on the possible wiretapping in The New York Times. See

Jonathan Ansfield and Ian Johnson, “Ousted Chinese Leader Is Said to Have Spied

on Other Top Officials,” April 25, 2012.

Copyright © 1963-2012 NYREV, Inc. All rights reserved.

A Chinese Murder Mystery_ by Ian Johnson

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