China?s current political imbroglio has turned into a political thriller being feasted on by its own netizens and the global media?allegations and counter-allegations between elite factions and people in the highest echelons, done behind the veil of leaks?and is being used to settle scores. All this is familiar territory in India, but something quite new and unprecedented in the ?monolithic? Communist Party state of China.
All this is happening for good reason. A sequence of events hitherto unrelated, in Chongqing municipality, appear to have a common denominator?the high-profile Communist Party leader from Chongqing, Bo Xilai, recently purged from the Party. Bo Xilai, the son of a Party immortal and elder, Bo Yibo, was a front-runner for a place at the Standing Committee of the Politburo?the highest decision-making body in China?at the 18th Party Congress scheduled for later this year. Bo Xilai?s unforeseen sacking?virtually disappearing in a whiff earlier this March?has coagulated an unprecedented political scandal: how to handle the first-time sacking of a princeling? Even from accounts as recent as sociologist Ezra Vogel?s magnum opus on Deng Xiaoping, it is easy to deduce that in terms of internal Party hierarchy, Bo Xilai?s father ranked higher than say Xi Jinping?s father, Xi Zhongshun, who introduced reforms in Guangdong in 1978.
Bo Xilai?s case has unexpectedly brought into the open the dark side of politics and business in China, what with elite factions and cliques indulging in infighting, mud-slinging at each others? children via the media, and whispers of espionage and coup. All this must be taken with a pinch of salt, as it is in Indian politics. Narrowly speaking, Bo Xilai was the closest China had to a Rajiv Gandhi-style political leader?openly westernised and displaying a flair for people politics. Bo Xilai clearly spoke the language of the younger post-socialist generation and was a vivid, if flamboyant, departure from the usual cog-in-the-wheel image of the Party, which explains why netizens are up in arms deriding his removal.
Are politics and business friends? Last November, the death of a 41-year-old Briton, Neil Haywood, in Chongqing, went relatively unnoticed. According to recent press reports that have emerged, Haywood was a consultant who figured on the management team at Beijing-based HL Consulting. HL Consulting is now attempting to wash off a Haywood connection, with president Shen Wei singing a predictable tune, that Haywood was put on the management team to ?make it look and sound better?. Changing tack is possible; the Chinese are as colour conscious as Indians.
According to Wall Street Journal (Hong Kong), Haywood?s death on account of excessive ?alcohol consumption? was accepted by his family and no autopsy conducted before cremation. The case was closed until a few friends suggested that Haywood was a teetotaller and rumours of a Haywood-Bo connection began to surface. Reports suggest Haywood played a sophisticated ?male nanny? to Bo Xilai?s son, Bo Guagua, who studied at Harrow, and then Oxford. There has been speculation that Haywood fell out with Bo Xilai because of a business rift. The rift was with Bo Xilai?s wife Gu Kailai, a lawyer who has the distinction of being the first Chinese to win a civil case in the US. Again, stoking the fire of rumours is an unprecedented move by the British Foreign Office asking for an inquiry into the death of Haywood, sparking an espionage theory.
Has a mix of a lack of intra-party democracy, elite factionalism and the invisible hand of the mafia crystallised this crisis? This is what the second event leads us to ask. In February, Chongqing?s high-profile police chief, Wang Lijun, popularly nicknamed ?Blue Sky Wang? and Bo Xilai?s right-hand man, headed to the US Consulate to seek political asylum. Wang had been heading a high-profile and bitter anti-mafia campaign popularly called dahei (literally meaning ?hitting the black? referring to striking at the mafia triads). This campaign received support from Bo Xilai, who derived popular support and considerably buoyed his public image at the national level (which in the Party bible is a faux pas) as a ?peoples? man?, superseding other notables in the line for Beijing. Bo Xilai, in the bargain, made intractable enemies.
Apparently, Wang discussed with Bo Xilai that Haywood had been poisoned, with the Straits Times (Singapore) quoting the foreign media as saying ?under the orders of Mr Bo?s wife? and that he presented himself to the American consulate with documentary evidence against Bo Xilai. Consulate officials are mum, but the press says they persuaded Wang to hand himself over to the police and security officials who had surrounded the Consulate. The real truth is a matter of wide conjecture.
The detention of Xu Ming, one of China?s richest men and a close ally of Bo Xilai, is sending a rather direct message, in an indirect manner. Xu Ming, of Chinese business conglomerate Shide Group is based in the Northeastern port city of Dalian. News of Xu Ming?s detention was carried out by Economy and Nation Weekly magazine, owned by Xinhua on the grounds of ?economic causes?, an euphemism for corruption. Corruption was the wide berth adopted by the Party in earlier high profile cases of purging, such as the removal of Beijing mayor Chen Xitong (in 1995) and Shanghai mayor Chen Liangyu (in 2006). There are allegations that Xu Ming was the financier of Bo Xilai?s son?s education abroad and that his rise was in sync with Bo Xilai?s stint as mayor of Dalian from 1993 -2000.
New videos have surfaced on China?s internet deriding Bo Xilai?s removal and deriding him. The government put an end to the war of words by a clampdown.
Nobody quite asks how India?s princelings had their education funded. In China, too, until recently, this was also the case. China?s moderniser Deng Xiaoping?s son and successor Jiang Zemin?s son studied abroad in the West, but no questions were asked about sources of funding. However, this seems to have changed. Bo had to publicly defend his son?s funding for education, and photos have been circulating in the media of Bo Guagua at Oxford, supposedly ?dishevelled and in disrepute?.
Who paid for Bo Guagua?s expensive education in Britain? Why Bo Guagua, you might ask? Recently, Mark Macdonald wrote in the New York Times on China?s changing times. For example, Li Xiaolin (Premier Li Peng?s daughter, term 1987-1998) was caught on camera wearing a pink Emilio Pucci dress that cost $2,000. Other cadres came wearing ?Hermes belts, Armani jackets, Chanel boots and Dior glasses? at the Party annual meeting this March. According to unsubstantiated rumours, the rise and rise of Wen Yunsong (son of Premier Wen Jiabao, term 2003-2012) as chairperson of state-owned China Satellite Communications Corp (China Satcom) in February is already creating ripples in the inner circles.
Is this all part of a change in elite politics in China or will the Party step in to stamp it out before the internal sniping challenges the carefully built image of the Party?
The author is a Singapore-based sinologist, currently a visiting fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi.Views are personal