China: 10th Anniversary of Bo Xilai's Resignation (Part 2)

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10 years ago, the arrest of Bo Xilai, a member of the Communist Party's princelings, shocked the whole of China. Bo Xilai, one of China's most famous political figures, used his position as the party secretary of the Communist Party of China in Chongqing as an opportunity to try to replace the then central leadership. Bo Xilai stepped down not mainly because of corruption (a charge that can be applied to all officials who have lost office or been purged), but because he was a key figure in the power struggle within the CCP. 2012 was a turbulent year for the world, with revolutionary upheavals in the Arab world. The Chinese regime fears similar developments within China. The result of the 2012 infighting in the CCP was the rise of Xi Jinping, which was followed by a very different policy direction than before — unprecedented centralization of power, nationalism and harsher authoritarian rule. Ironically, these are the hallmarks of Bo Xilai's rule, which is reviving Chongqing's "red culture".

Many of the Maoists in China have a big fantasy about Bo Xilai. They saw Bo Xilai as a more progressive alternative to the leadership of Hu and Wen at the time, and even believed that Bo was opposed to the CCP's path to capitalist restoration. But in reality he does not represent an anti-capitalist alternative. The newly formed Chinese Maoist Communist Party even held a meeting in Chongqing to elect Bo Xilai as general secretary, but all the attendees were arrested.

Here, we republish two articles written by China Labor Forum in 2012. In the aftermath of these events, the course of some events became clearer, while others developed in ways that we did not and could not foresee at the time. Nonetheless, the main points of our 2012 analysis have been proven correct by subsequent developments.

Bo Xilai and the internal crisis of the CCP

The pending criminal trial and the party congress have been postponed, highlighting the deep crisis within the CCP regime

Vincent Kolo China Labour Forum

On September 28, the Politburo meeting of the Communist Party of China decided to expel the fallen "princeling" Bo Xilai from the ruling "Communist" party. This marks a new stage in the power struggle at the top of the CCP, at least the most serious in two decades. Disagreement over how to handle Bo Xilai has more or less caused the postponement of the CCP's five-year party congress - only now announced to be held on November 8, one later than previously expected moon.

The delay is reflected in the composition of the new leadership announced at the 18th National Congress, and there are serious divisions within the CCP. The dates for the first three party congresses (in 1997, 2002 and 2007) were announced as early as the end of August, a month earlier than this time. In August, as before, party leaders held a secret meeting in the seaside resort of Beidaihe, expected to reach an agreement on the composition of the fiercely competitive leadership. But the delay in announcing a date for the 18th Congress shows that any deal is at risk of breaking down in the new factional struggle.

fate suddenly changed

Bo Xilai's fate has become a bargaining chip between his supporters and his opponents in the party leadership. Bo Xilai's opponents - including the collective leadership of current President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao - appear to have the upper hand on the issue, but the question is what price will they pay? What concessions will Hu Jintao's "Tuanpai" be forced to make in the allocation of seats to the Politburo Standing Committee, the party's highest organ of power?

“It seems that the factional conflict and power struggle over how to handle Bo Xilai has reached an unprecedented level this year,” said Chen Ziming, a commentator based in Beijing. He believes the issue "forces the top leadership to change the previous consensus (reached in Beidaihe in August)."

The severe fragmentation of the one-party dictatorship reflects explosive tensions in society - Asia's worst divide between rich and poor, corruption and hundreds of "mass incidents" every day. The current struggle is mainly centered between the CCP faction “Princes” (the wealthy second and third generations of CCP veterans, such as Bo Xilai) and their opponents represented by the “Tuanpai”. The princeling rivals want to control the princelings' power to some extent and break their "vested interests" (including powerful state-owned industrial groups), which are seen as obstacles to accelerating economic liberalization.

Some commentators have even compared the severity of the current internal struggle to Lin Biao's failed coup attempt to replace Mao Zedong in 1971. Lin Biao, who was trying to escape to the Soviet Union at the time, died in a mysterious plane crash.

Bo Xilai's expulsion is the first step in starting to prep for trial performances aimed at politically (if not physically) "getting rid of" Bo Xilai. He is now expected to face a lengthy sentence, possibly even the death penalty. While it could spark fierce protests from the thins across China, some of his "liberal" opponents want such a harsh trial -- to rule out any chance of his return to politics. Bo Xilai's trial is unlikely to be public to avoid any public opposition or public charges that his opponents also committed crimes. Therefore, the trial process is likely not as democratic as the 1981 trial of the Maoist "Gang of Four". The television broadcast Jiang Qing's two-hour lecture to the prosecutor.

Bo Xilai and the "New Left"

Before his dismissal as party secretary of Chongqing, Bo Xilai was the symbolic exponent of the resurgent "New Left." The "New Left" is a loose, broad coalition of grassroots Maoist-influenced youth, nationalists and veteran Communist Party cadres who criticize Beijing's neoliberal and pro-globalization policies. Despite his million-dollar fortune, Bo Xilai has gained national popularity for his blatant self-promotion and (against the backlash against the aftermath of the restoration of capitalism) the neo-Maoist "singing red" movement.

Bo Xilai's former deputy and police chief Wang Lijun, now in jail, has carried out a ruthless crackdown on Chongqing's notorious "underworld". The move has been criticized by human rights supporters, and the campaign has also targeted many people who are not "underworld". Such a high-profile campaign and its popularity did not endear Bo Xilai himself to the current Hu-Wen leadership. Bo Xilai is seen as a threat, and Beijing wants to tighten its grip on increasingly self-righteous provincial and local authorities. At the same time, Bo Xilai has become a symbol of the "princelings" whose arrogance, corruption and abuse of power will threaten the CCP's rule if left unchecked.

risky strategy

After he was "double-opened", the state media severely attacked Bo Xilai, citing crimes such as abuse of power, accepting bribes, and even "improper sexual relations", and they traced him all the way almost two decades ago. When the deputy mayor of Dalian. In Guangming Daily, he was criticized for his habit of "speaking alone", ruling Chongqing with an "iron fist", and being an "extremely filthy" person. The Guangming Daily is a media controlled by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. This openly liberal mouthpiece could not fail to attack Bo Xilai's claimed leftist stance, calling it the "old-fashioned political model that has brought unprecedented disaster to China."

The attack on Bo Xilai is a high-risk strategy for the CCP leadership. “They went all out against Bo Xilai,” commented Patrick Chovanec, an economist at Tsinghua University. It is clear that the purpose is not only to destroy Bo Xilai, but also to simultaneously attack the neo-Maoist leftists who increasingly openly regard Bo Xilai as their standard-bearer. But anti-Bin propaganda can also fuel public suspicion of the regime as a whole.

One can't help but ask, if Bo Xilai "violated party discipline" for more than 20 years, why did the authorities stop him only now? We were told that Bo Xilai was a "one word" (of course we would not disagree), but is his behavior less or more authoritarian than other CCP officials?

As the liberal historian Yuan Weishi said: "Why did he do evil for so long, and what kind of soil produced these behaviors?" It eventually led to Bo Xilai's ouster. But human rights lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan commented on Weibo: "Bo Xilai should be held responsible for Wang Lijun's oversight of employment, so who will take responsibility for Bo Xilai's oversight of employment?"

It is difficult for the authorities to estimate the consequences of these attacks on Bo Xilai. Possibly sparking protests from Bo Xilai's opponents and supporters, who doubt the regime's integrity and its ability to deal with corruption and abuse of power. The deadlock over Bo Xilai's fate and the postponement of the party congress show the seriousness of the attack and the risks it could pose. In addition to being protected by other "princelings", Bo Xilai also enjoys considerable support outside the CCP and in the military, arguably no other CCP official can match.

“The Bo Xilai incident is unprecedented. He clearly has much more power than Chen Liangyu [former Shanghai party secretary, jailed for corruption] and Chen Xitong [former Beijing party secretary, also jailed for corruption],” Zhongshan, Guangzhou University professor Wei Shi mentioned two of the worst corruption cases in the past two decades.

Gu Kailai's murder trial

This shows that things have changed completely after the August trial of Gu Kailai (wife of Bo Xilai), who was given a suspended death sentence after confessing to the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood. Gu Kailai's court performance did not mention Bo Xilai at all. And now we read in the Xinhua News Agency's report that Bo Xilai was "greatly responsible" in the Wang Lijun incident and Bo Gu Kailai's intentional homicide case - which was not noticed in the Gu Kailai case! Likewise, the question of corruption was downplayed in the Gu Kailai trial, although Heywood was known to launder money for the Bo Xilai family and was killed as a result of a dispute with Gu Kailai after a multimillion-dollar deal broke down.

By not mentioning Bo Xilai's name, the trial heralded that Bo Xilai would be exonerated from criminal charges and landed softly through the CCP's internal disciplinary committee. And this is part of the agreement on the 18th National Congress. But clearly, things have changed. The changes began in mid-September when Wang Lijun, the former Chongqing public security chief, was sentenced to 15 years in prison (though he still received a light sentence, although one of the four major crimes was attempting to defect to the United States). Official reports of Wang Lijun's very secret trial cited Bo Xilai's attempt to cover up Heywood's murder. Although Bo Xilai's name was not mentioned, the report mentioned "the main person in charge of the Chongqing Municipal Party Committee at that time".

We are now told that Bo Xilai "accepted huge bribes from others, both directly and through his family," (Xinhua, September 28). Yet at the time of Gu Kailai's trial two months ago, there were no such serious charges against Gu Kailai and Bo Guagua (Bo Xilai's son, who is said to be in hiding in the United States). The lack of mention of such an allegation despite its close connection to the Heywood murder shows the extent to which the CCP leadership has distorted the Gu Kailai trial for their own purposes, and the narrative is now different from what it used to be. The upcoming Bo Xilai trial is also unlikely to show greater "fairness".

Even the official cause of Haywood's death has been questioned. On September 26, Wang Xuemei, one of China's most prominent forensic doctors, publicly questioned Gu's confession on her blog that she poisoned Heywood with cyanide. Because this produces obvious and lethal manifestations of poisoning, such as a change in the color of the corpse, that cannot possibly go unnoticed by the forensic medical examiner at the scene. Wang Xuemei speculated that Heywood's blog post may have been suffocated to death and was soon blocked. Why did the prosecution need to "amend" Heywood's cause of death? But it was out of the need to support the allegedly mentally unstable Gu Kailai's explanation that he killed himself. Because the simpler (and more logical) explanation is that the security services under Bo Xilai's control sent "professionals" to deal with Heywood.

Similar factual "modifications" are also likely to occur in Bo Xilai's trial. In fact, this has already begun. In the media war against Bo Xilai, the official level of Bo Xilai's corruption was appropriately "reduced", and he was only accused of taking bribes of 20 million yuan. That's a pretty low figure, especially since it covers bribery throughout his career of more than two decades.

"As far as I know, it is far more than 20 million," said Li Zhuang, a lawyer who was imprisoned by Bo Xilai. "It can be said that it is far more than 200 million."

However, true reporting of the Bo Xilai family's corrupt proceeds will bring serious problems to the CCP regime. The decision to drive down the amount of wealth, along with the inclusion of “inappropriate sexual relations with multiple women” (not a crime in China), is a diversion by the authorities and their propaganda machines. Still, many would argue that he is not so much a "bad guy"; Bo Xilai is no better or worse than other senior CCP officials at getting money out of his own pocket.

Most commentators believe that the level of corruption in Bo Xilai and his family, although possibly in the billions, is not an exception in China today. “They (CCP officials) don’t believe in anything but money,” commented Liu Junsheng of China University of Political Science and Law. He is an expert in analyzing the new generation of CCP leaders.

Overseas media, based on CCP insiders, said that when Bo Xilai served as secretary of the Chongqing Municipal Party Committee from 2007 to 2012, he accepted one billion yuan in bribes just for the promotion of officials. If such (more real) amounts surfaced at his trial, it would inevitably spark calls for a wider investigation. Many of the officials who bribed Bo Xilai to get promoted still wear their expensive official hats—and only a handful were liquidated after their “benefactors” stepped down.

Power struggle continues

The events surrounding Bo Xilai cannot be explained in terms of corruption or crime alone. “There are so many questions about Bo Xilai’s fall and the murder scandal that no one can answer. Because they are not legal questions in the first place,” said He Weifang, a law professor at Peking University. “All we see is the result of political intrigue and power struggle.”

In China, high-level corruption cases are often driven by struggles among party factions over influence and power. These factions are not based on any well-established political goals or ideology, but rather on gang loyalty or power politics. Although confusion often arises due to the lack of clear political distinctions, the current power struggle reflects marked divisions between these factions. Wen's "reformers" (which are said to also include incoming President Xi Jinping) want to accelerate deregulation and privatization of the economy, reducing the dominant role of state-owned enterprises. And officials like Bo Xilai favor more government intervention and defense of the national bourgeoisie against foreign capital.

Within the party's power structure, Bo Xilai is in principle supported by the faction of the 86-year-old former president Jiang Zemin, who are also known as the "Shanghai Gang" and the "Prince Party." The reason they did not want Bo Xilai to be formally tried was not primarily out of political solidarity (most princelings oppose Bo Xilai's Maoist populism), but because they felt the need for a collective self-preservation. The public revelation of Bo Xilai's crimes will threaten to underlie the "princelings" of a privileged class of society, and will at the same time pose a greater institutional threat to the one-party autocratic party-state system itself.

Steve Tsang, a professor of contemporary China at the University of Nottingham, believes the recent change in events means the Jiang faction "has agreed to dump him outright in exchange for a leadership change agreement."

Jiang Zemin's faction appears to have sacrificed Bo Xilai for more seats on the new Politburo Standing Committee. Rumor has it that Jiang Zemin, who has long since officially retired, attended the Politburo meeting on September 28 that expelled Bo Xilai. This also shows that outgoing President Hu Jintao's regimental faction made concessions on the seat of the Politburo Standing Committee in exchange for Bo Xilai's head.

But unlike some commentators, this was not a victory for Hu and Wen's "reformist camp." It's more likely a deal, including a compromise with Jiang Zemin, showing that he still has widespread influence. The number of seats on the Politburo Standing Committee, which is expected to rule China, will be reduced from nine to seven in order to concentrate more power in the hands of incoming President Xi Jinping, which will also intensify the power struggle - like a savage "grab" Chair Game".

anti-japan march

It is also possible that the Hu Jintao faction, backed by Xi Jinping, has recently changed their stance in favor of "finishing" the Bo Xilai issue, even if it means having Jiang Zemin's "princelings" in the new leadership greater effect.

Among them, the balance of power may be disrupted by the recent anti-Japanese demonstrations in more than 100 cities in China. The biggest wave of protests in years, calling for Japan to return the Diaoyu Islands, echoed high-profile right-wing Japanese nationalists. The marches also showed more signs of division within the CCP.

Although Beijing tried to maintain a strong grip on the protests and used them to increase its leverage in negotiations with the Japanese and American governments, there were some phenomena that shocked Beijing during the march. The appearance of portraits of Mao Zedong in many of the demonstrations, especially with slogans supporting Bo Xilai, made the central government feel that the protests were "kidnapped" by Bo's supporters and factional allies in the security services and local governments. This "warned many people in the party," said Zhang Ming, a political scientist at Renmin University in Beijing.

By targeting Bo Xilai, the CCP leadership not only wants to prevent Bo Xilai from making a political comeback in the future, but also strikes at Bo Xilai's supporters in the "New Left", preventing them from challenging the regime and Its increasingly neoliberal policies.

Many bourgeois governments around the world have said that the decision to try Bo Xilai means that Beijing and its party congress and leadership change are "back on track". Before that, global stock markets were as nervous as they were about the paralysis and "stalemate" of the Chinese government as they were with the United States and the European Union. This shows the panic among the bourgeoisie looking at a possible hard landing for China's economy, eager for a return of Beijing's "introduction" of measures including a bigger stimulus package.

But no matter what fate Bo Xilai will face, it does not mean the end of the power struggle within the regime, and the power struggle itself is only a microcosm of the fundamental social contradictions in Chinese society (by the corrupt capitalist combined with the one-party dictatorship stalemate brought about by ideology). The struggle will continue, and new actions by the regime may bring new dynamics of conflict.

“It is very risky for the party to expose these scandals. They are playing with fire,” warned Patrick Chovanec. What is really needed now is a mass working-class political force fighting for democratic rights and socialism, completely independent of any CCP faction (right or so-called "left").

Note: The Committee for the Workers International (CWI) changed its name to the International Socialist Way (ISA) in 2020. China Labor Forum is ISA's China website.