Bo Xilai's wife was convicted of killing a British businessman who objected to a change in the rules. I'd argue most all will never get the full story.
The Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai scandal masks the battle for China's future
The melodrama of Bo Xilai's fall has been used to press for privatisation, but the global crisis demands an alternative
Seumas Milne
The Guardian, Tuesday 14 August 2012 17.20 EDT
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The murder trial of Gu Kailai and downfall of her husband Bo Xilai has lurched from Shakespearean tragedy to Victorian melodrama. All the essential elements are there: overweening ambition, a poisoning, a sink of corruption, treachery and blackmail.
Add in the alleged British spy Neil Heywood's rendezvous with death at the Lucky Holiday Hotel in Chongqing and Gu's reported comment to investigators to "write up anything they'd like" she couldn't remember for her confession, and China's greatest political scandal for a generation seems like a cross between an airport thriller and a Stalinist show trial.
There's no reason to believe we'll be any the wiser as to what actually happened when the court gives its verdict and sentence – or if Bo himself, sacked as Chongqing's Communist party secretary, is put on trial for "serious disciplinary violations".
The evidence suggests at least that Bo's family, like those of other Chinese leaders, enriched themselves on the back of his position – and that Heywood was up to his neck in that. What's much clearer is that the fall of Bo, who attempted to use his left-leaning Chongqing administration to secure a commanding place in the party's Beijing leadership, has been seized on to change China's political direction.
As the scandal erupted earlier this year, powerful forces out for full-scale privatisation made a concerted bid for decisive "reform". In February, a World Bank report, backed by elements in the government, demanded sweeping deregulation and a "complete transition to a market economy". The call was taken up at the National People's Congress. Corporate interests that had chafed against a system in which they claimed "the state advances, the private sector retreats" launched a neoliberal offensive.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/14/bo-xilai-scandal-masking-chinas-future
Wonder who'll win? The people or the state (political elite)?
= new reply since forum marked as read
