Page 1 of
2 Bo
Xilai drama becomes Beijing
opera By Chris Stewart
President Hu Jintao returns to Beijing on
Monday after a seven-day tour of the three
neighboring capitals that will have done much to
assure world leaders the coup rumors sweeping
China a week before his departure were without
merit. Now the hurly burly is done in Beijing,
normal service has been resumed across the
country.
Hu's tour took in South Korea,
for the multi-national Seoul Security Summit, New
Delhi to meet the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India
and South Africa, and lastly Cambodia. He will now
be seeking to ensure there is no repeat of the
unseemly outburst of gossip that flowed from the
"coup" rumors early on March 20, and will want to
get on with a tidy transition of power across
numerous government positions about six months
hence.
The loose talk focused on the
immediate and long-term prospects
of Zhou Yongkang, one of
the nine members of the Politburo Standing
Committee (PSC) and the country's police chief,
who will retire from the inner circle in the
shake-up, along with Hu and Prime Minister Wen
Jiabao among others. Hu has since the coup talk
been seen at least two official gatherings.
One sign that it is now business as usual
was the appearance last week of Apple's chief
executive officer Timothy Cook, who met Vice
Premier Li Keqiang, the presumptive heir to Wen,
before heading west to Zhengzhou to visit a
120,000-workforce factory run by Taiwan's Foxconn,
which has contracts to make Apple's iPhones and
iPads.
Another sign - citizens in central
China's Chongqing municipality will from Monday
again be able to watch soap operas and commercials
on local state-run Chongqing Satellite TV. They
were axed by recently sacked Communist Party
secretary Bo Xilai in favor of Mao Zedong-era
revolutionary slogans.
The policy change
will help reverse an estimated US$40 million drop
in revenue caused by the cuts, according to Mayor
Huang Qifan, who honed his number-crunching in
helping to create Pudong, Shanghai's ultra-modern
financial center. The TV station slumped in
popularity from third to 23rd in the four years of
Bo ruling Chongqing, one survey found. According
to local news official outlet Chongqing Daily, the
channel denied that it would restore commercials
in this round of program adjustment.
Media
coverage of the city frequently cites the
"Chongqing Daily". Confusingly, another "Chongqing
Daily", in English, existed until February 3, the
last date on its website front page. It is now
hosted on the site of "The China Times", a United
Kingdom website founded in 2009 and which has
heavily promoted Vice President Xi Jinping since
February 13, when he visited Washington.
The Chinese characters of the UK's
"Chongqing Daily" translate not as that but as
"Two Rivers", in reference to the city's
strategically important location at the confluence
of the Jialing River and the Yangtze River. The
website copycats the Financial Times of London
with pink pages, The Times (of London) in its
masthead, and The China Times, founded in Taiwan
soon after republican forces fled there from Mao's
troops in 1949. The site editor had not replied to
Asia Times Online inquiries at the time of this
article's publication.
Unlike the
Financial Times and The Times, The China Times
(UK) makes no mention of the sacking of Bo's
former police chief Wang Lijun the day before the
"Chongqing Daily" closed, or the death in
Chongqing last November of British businessman
Neil Heywood. The UK government this week urged an
inquiry into his death, while reports are emerging
that Wang first sought refuge in the UK consulate
in Chongqing before racing on to the US consulate
in Chengdu about 200 kilometers away in an
unsuccessful effort to seek asylum there.
Websites run by overseas opponents of Bo
and Wang (and of former president Jiang Zemin)
claim they were linked to the March 19 "non-coup"
in a move originally planned for later in the year
at the earliest, after Xi was appointed president
of China and Bo in charge of the country's 1.5
million strong police force. The present PSC
official overseeing the police, Zhou Yongkang, was
his supposed ally in this endeavor. Zhou is still
in office, as of early last week.
Here was a caesar; whence comes such
another Bo's present existence in
custody is a long fall from last July when his
staging of Communist Party 90th anniversary
celebrations glorified the role of Mao, leader of
the country from 1949 until his death in 1976. One packed stand
proclaimed, "Red songs praising Party, heard
across China " - "A terrible request, reminding us
of the Cultural Revolution, which even the Chinese
leadership hates" one Chinese woman told Asia
Times Online.
Among the songs thrilling
the estimated 100,000 people were extracts from
the 1964 opera of revolution, the Red
Detachment of Women.
Bo's overseas
guest of honor was Henry Kissinger, who watching
the drama may have recalled music from "Nixon in
China", the 1987 John Adams work that commemorates
the US president's historic February 21, 1972,
meeting with Mao and which includes an extract
from the Red Detachment opera. The invite
to Kissinger recognized the central role of the
former US secretary of state in organizing that
meeting.
The Chinese appreciation of Kissinger
runs deep. The 1972 breakthrough he engineered
paved the way for the US to warn Beijing that
Russia looked set to attack on the north as its
own troops struggled in their 1979 invasion of Vietnam
through the Yunnan and Guangxi borders. Retreat
hastily followed, and is well remembered in the
region, not least since that ignominy local
soldiers have reportedly lagged other regions in
pay rates. [2]
Bo's celebrations last July
continued with him taking a song and dance troupe
to display their revolutionary fervor in Beijing.
Later accounts say no members of the PSC attended,
publicly demonstrating Bo's political isolation.
For all that, he had friends around him.
Perfect harmony The official
Chongqing Daily News at the time published a long
list of those attending. [3] They included Li
Jinai - director general of the People's
Liberation Army (PLA) General Political Department
and member of the Central Military Commission. Li
is closely involved with North Korea, in the
middle of last November leading a "senior"
military delegation there, the People's Daily
reported.
Jing Zhiyuan, also a member of
the Central Military Commission and since 2007
commander of the Second Artillery Force, was also
there. Some of his forces played starring roles
that evening while he himself got up on stage
alongside Bo to lead a stirring ditty or two.
The Second Artillery Force is the body
controlling China's conventional and nuclear
missiles. Dengtian Sheng, deputy political
commissar of that force, welcomed the Chongqing
visitors "on behalf of Beijing", according to a
less-than-perfect English translation in The
Chongqing Daily News report.
The Chongqing
guests, in turn, offered "sympathy" to the Second
Artillery Force officers and men "for the Beijing
stadium show". The capital's centerpiece
anniversary celebration clearly lacked the red
fervor Kissinger had viewed with Bo a few days
earlier.
The Chongqing Daily News reported
When the last program
Revival performance is over, Bo Xilai, Li Jinai, Jing
Zhiyuan and other leaders took to the stage, and
all the actors and the scene officers and men
sing together in harmony no new China
without the Communist Party.
What is apparently a picture caption
singles out the nuclear artillery performers:
"June 10 evening, the PLA Second Artillery Force
in the live performances".
Jing Zhiyuan's
nuclear missile forces will be among the
beneficiaries of an 11% rise to US$106.4 billion
in China's official military budget this year.
Public security forces led by Zhou Yongkang do
even better, getting $111.4 billion. That could
mean more cash to spend on military-style
exercises by both police and the armed forces.
By one very rough gauge, a survey of items
published in the military archive section of the
state-owned People's Daily, military activity of
all sorts surged late last year and remains high
compared with last spring. In November 2011, 78
articles were published, up from 24 the previous
month. Figures for other months last year are: 3
(February), 10 (March), 12 (April), 7 (May), 5
(June), 15 (July), 48 (August) and 18 (September).
It should be noted only some of these items refer
to military exercises, though these were more
numerous in November.
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