Poreg view: Known as one of the crown princes of Communist party of China, Bo Xilai’s purge is as sudden and dramatic as his meteoric rise. He was expecting a promotion to the Politburo’s Standing Committee when he received the proverbial pink slip; it is the price the 62-year-old charismatic leader has to pay after the first major political assassination in China in six-years.
Some say he is the victim of the assassination. Others aver that he was involved himself in the ‘disappearance’ of his former police chief, Wang Lijun, who in the month of February briefly took shelter in the American Consulate in Chengdu, around 350 km from Chongqing. Well, Wang wanted to defect but failed.
There are no two opinions, however, that Bo’s purge is the biggest upheaval to rock the CPC elite since Chen Liangyu was purged as Shanghai’s party secretary in 2006. It has taken place when the party was gearing up leadership change in October and jockeying for key positions has begun among the various factions within the party.
People’s Daily briefly reported the axing of Bo. A post on its website said, Bo, a former Commerce minister and a member of the 25-member Politburo, would no longer serve as the party secretary of Chongqing. He is replaced by Zhang Dejiang, a vice premier in charge of inspecting China’s energy, telecommunications and transport industries.
Bo’s father, Bo Yibo, was one of the “eight immortals” who had helped to ‘revive’ China from the ravages of Cultural Revolution and the terrors of Chairman Mao’s final years. So, Bo had a quick rise and acquired a cult status that insured him from detractors. His son lives in Harvard where he studied.
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Bo could have survived Wang Lijun saga in February but the allegation that he had wanted to defect and had information on Bo did him in. No body had an inkling of what Wang had as a dossier on Bo and the mere talk of he passing on info to the Americans was enough to make Bo friendless. On his part the former police chief managed to enter the American Consulate and stayed there for the night but it proved out to be a small interlude. He was spirited away from Chengdu to Beijing, and has not been heard since.
Bo’s departure is a sad reflection on the quality of current crop of Communist party leaders, who are trying to be cult figures by deftly exploiting the privileged positions they are in by virtue of their birth. Bo’s enormous popularity, it is said, has much to do with his revival of ‘red’ culture; like at the time of Chairman Mao, he used to send officials to work in the countryside and carried out a brutal onslaught on corrupt businessmen and officials. The icing on Bo’s cake was asking workers to sing revolutionary songs and holding relaxed media contacts besides a sophisticated lifestyle. This was Mao’s Cultural Revolution in a new format. It highlighted the deep fault-lines in CCP, which has made the party hostage to factional infighting.
