HONG
KONG - Just when it looked like China's impending
change in leadership would be an unremarkable
procession of boring old men draped in dark suits,
a political earthquake in the southwestern
municipality of Chongqing may have canceled the
orderly parade.
At the center of the
controversy is - yet again - charismatic Chongqing
Communist Party chief, Bo Xilai, who has made no
secret of his desire to jump
into China's charmed circle of power - the
nine-person Politburo Standing Committee - at the
coming autumn's party congress.
The
irrepressible Bo, 63, has revived the
revolutionary songs and spirit of Mao Zedong and
ridden a massive anti-crime campaign in once
triad-riddled Chongqing to gain national and
international attention and thereby crash his way
into the battle for a seat on the Standing
Committee.
Now, however, Bo's right-hand
man in the war against crime and corruption in the
sprawling municipality of 29 million people may
have turned against his boss and spoiled his
chances to join China's top decision-making body.
Last week, after rumors spread on the
Internet that Chongqing Vice Mayor Wang Lijun had
sought asylum in the US consulate in Sichuan
province's capital city, Chengdu, located 340
kilometers northwest of Chongqing, US and Chinese
officials confirmed that Wang had visited the
embassy last Monday. But both sides said nothing
about any bid the 52-year-old Wang may have made
for asylum; nor was there any mention of "secret
papers" Wang was rumored to have offered in
exchange for a new home in the US.
"Our
folks met with him," US State Department
spokeswoman Vitoria Nuland said. "He did visit the
consulate, and he later left the consulate of his
own volition."
China's Foreign Ministry
released this statement: "Vice Mayor Wang entered
the US Consulate General on February 6, stayed
there for one day and left. Authorities are
investigating the case."
There have been
different reports about where this investigation
has led. Hong Kong's South China Morning Post,
citing anonymous sources in Beijing and Chongqing,
said Wang has been taken in for questioning by the
Central Commission for Discipline Inspection,
which would indicate the former crime-fighter and
graft-buster is now himself under investigation
for corruption.
But another, unconfirmed
report circulating on Chinese-language websites
that was also picked up by the Hong Kong-based
Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy
claims Wang has been seized by China's Ministry of
State Security. This is plausible since China's
security czar would no doubt be interested in what
Wang was talking about with the Americans during
his sojourn in their Chengdu consulate.
The mystery and intrigue is compounded by
this week's visit to the US by China's vice
president, Xi Jinping, who is expected to succeed
President Hu Jintao following the 18th party
congress later this year.
When Xi meets
with US President Barack Obama on Valentine's Day
at the White House, surely the last topic either
leader wants to discuss is Wang. This puts
Washington in a delicate position as it was the
decision by American consulate officials to meet
with Wang on Chinese soil that has stirred all the
controversy and ignited the cyber gossip.
In return for asylum, did Wang offer
documents that would compromise Bo - the
"princeling" son of the late Bo Yibo, one of the
revered Eight Elders of the party? Speculation
that consular officials checked with Washington
and said "no" to avoid underming Xi's trip is
contradicted by US rules that prohibit diplomatic
posts from offering asylum. Asylum seekers must
apply inside the US or at border posts.
What does seem apparent is that neither
the Americans nor the Chinese want the Wang
incident to undermine Xi's visit. The topic will
not even come up during the Xi-Obama meeting in
Washington.
In China, however, it clearly
will not go away and could very well harm Bo's
campaign to become one of China's most powerful
men. No matter the final outcome of the Wang
ordeal, the Chongqing party chief's armor has
already been badly dented. But some China watchers
caution that, given Bo's strong connections to
other princelings including Xi himself, the Wang
case need not mark his political end as long as he
can clear himself of any charges that may emerge
against him.
Adding to the intrigue
surrounding the story is speculation that Wang's
actions are a part of a broader conspiracy to
discredit Bo for his iconoclasm and leftist
ideology, which have never been embraced by any of
the current Standing Committee members, including
Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao.
Wang's case
calls to mind the fall from power six years ago of
Shanghai mayor Chen Liangyu as Chinese leaders
were gearing up for the last party congress.
Suddenly, the previously untouchable Chen, an ally
of former President Jiang Zemin, was brought down
on charges of corruption in what was seen as a
victory for Hu as he maneuvered to enhance his
authority ahead of the congress that would
guarantee him a second term as president. Jiang's
influence has never been the same since.
In the week before he wound up on the
doorstep of the US consulate in Chengdu, Wang had
already fallen from grace. After apparently losing
favor with Bo, the vice mayor had been removed
from his job as police chief and reassigned to an
education and culture portfolio.
Guan
Haixiang, deputy party head of Chongqing's
Jiangjin district, will reportedly be the new
police boss. Before taking up his position in
Jiangjin, Guan, 42, spent 15 years on the central
committee of the Communist Party Youth League,
Hu's old stomping grounds and power base.
Following his demotion, Wang was placed on
"stress leave" and told to take a prolonged
holiday. Now analysts wonder whether Wang may have
been driven into the arms of the Americans because
he felt his life was under threat. Even if his
rumored plea for asylum was rejected, Wang may
have reckoned that the media spotlight brought to
his case by his consulate visit would protect him
from harm.
Wang's association with Bo goes
back to Bo's time as governor of northeastern
Liaoning province from 2001 to 2004. An ethnic
Mongolian, Wang started out in 1984 as a lowly
traffic policeman in a small county in Liaoning
two years after leaving the People's Liberation
Army. By 1993, he had risen to become deputy
director of public security in the city of
Tieling, leading a high-profile, anti-crime
crusade that destroyed Tieling's largest triad and
put behind bars corrupt city officials beholden to
criminal bosses.
As governor, Bo liked
what he saw and appointed Wang police chief first
of Tieling and later of Jinzhou.
In 2008,
after Bo was promoted to his new post of party
secretary in Chongqing, he brought Wang into his
administration to wage a holy war against triads
there. As in Tieling, Wang's heavy-handed
crackdown netted not just gangsters and their
underlings but also dozens of city officials -
including Wen Qiang, director of the Chongqing
Municipal Judicial Bureau, who was executed in
2010 after being convicted of rape, taking bribes
and shielding criminal gangs.
Overall,
since Wang launched his anti-triad drive in 2009,
more than 2,000 people have been detained, and
Chongqing has become a notably safer place where
corruption is punished rather than rewarded.
Meanwhile, Bo has taken all the credit and, as a
result, achieved star status and a shot at a seat
on the all-powerful Standing Committee.
That lofty status has been marred by
allegations that Wang's no-holds-barred approach
to crime-busting paid scant attention to due
process, used torture to extract confessions and
jailed lawyers who dared to defend those accused.
Those troubling allegations
notwithstanding, Bo aims to capitalize on his
success in Chongqing and his venerated family
history to win a seat at China's highest table.
Over the weekend, as he welcomed Canadian
Prime Minister Stephen Harper to Chongqing, Bo
appeared as relaxed, poised and supremely
confident as ever. Harper offered thanks for two
giant pandas that have been on loan from Chongqing
to Canada for the past 10 years, and neither man
betrayed any knowledge of the storm clouds
gathering over Bo's political future.
As
of last week, however, Bo may have become a victim
of his own success, setting off an intense, if
unspoken, power struggle in the run-up to the
leadership shuffle.
Kent Ewing
is a Hong Kong-based teacher and writer. He can be
reached at kewing56@gmail.com Follow him on
Twitter: @KentEwing1
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