Bo Xilai
The background
Gu Kailai, the wife of disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai, has been given a suspended death sentence for the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood. Kailai did not contest charges at her one-day trial that she poisoned Heywood in November 2011, reported the BBC, which described the trial as China’s “most high-profile” for years.
The Heywood case has rocked Chinese politics and society. Reform-minded Bo, the former party chief in Chongqing, was once seen as a shoo-in to join China’s nine-strong politburo Standing Committee later this year. Bo has not been seen in public since the investigation into his wife was announced. A lengthy Xinhua news agency write-up of Gu’s trial made no mention of Bo but he is under internal party investigation for disciplinary offences, and “some suspect he may yet face criminal charges,” said Tania Branigan of The Guardian.
Chinese state media reported that during the 9 August trial – which was not open to all – Gu admitted she plied Heywood with whisky and poured poison into his mouth in a hotel room in Chongqing, helped by her aide, Zhang Xiaojun. She said she had suffered a mental breakdown and that old Harrovian Heywood – once a part of her inner circle – had threatened her only son (Bo Guagua) amid a row over a property deal, state media added.
Heywood’s death was initially recorded as a heart attack. The case came to light when Bo deputy, police chief Wang Lijun, fled to the US consulate in February, reportedly with information connected to the case.
“I will accept and calmly face any sentence and I also expect a fair and just court decision,” said Gu, in her first reported comments on the case.
Reaction in China
The Wall Street Journal’s China Realtime Report examined reaction on the Chinese internet and found commentators to be perplexed by the seemingly lenient verdict. “A murder carried out according to a meticulous plan, and in the end it’s a suspended death sentence? How wonderful life is, how handy the law can be, as long as you have the Party to protect you,” popular newspaper columnist and social commentator Yao Bo wrote on Sina Corp.’s Weibo microblogging service. “It was just one of hundreds of posts on the site depicting the verdict as proof that Chinese courts feel sudden bouts of mercy when the most powerful stand trial, while others are much more quick to face the death penalty,” reported the WSJ.
Official version of what happened to Heywood is unconvincing
Reporting from China, Tania Branigan of The Guardian said the conviction was “never in doubt – official version of case still is.” Branigan said the official version of how Heywood met his untimely end “appears carefully calibrated to justify the trial of a disgraced yet still popular leader’s wife, while defending the reputation of the Communist party.” “Whatever happens, the story now seems set in the world’s imagination,” said Branigan. “Elements of it read like a bad airport novel: the upper-class Englishman with links to former spies, the Dragon Lady armed with poison, the charismatic but ruthless leader and the maverick police chief. But its wider arc has the moral force of a Shakespearean tale of ambition and betrayal. If Gu did indeed kill a former friend to protect her family, her actions appear to have instead ensured its destruction.”
A highly politicised trial
“China’s greatest political scandal for a generation seems like a cross between an airport thriller and a Stalinist show trial,” gasped Seamus Milne at The Guardian’s Comment is free. “The evidence suggests at least that Bo’s family, like those of other Chinese leaders, enriched themselves on the back of his position – and that Heywood was up to his neck in that,” said Milne, who argued that “the fall of Bo, who attempted to use his left-leaning Chongqing administration to secure a commanding place in the party’s Beijing leadership, has been seized on” by political opponents to change China’s political direction.
Communist Party still faces uncomfortable questions
“The outcome of the case is a neat one for the Communist Party,” insisted Damian Grammaticas of the BBC. “It pins the blame for Neil Heywood’s death on Gu Kailai, but she escapes the full death penalty.” “Many will believe it is her political connections that have won her this reprieve,” said Grammaticus, who insisted that the trial “has conveniently avoided the most sensitive questions. Did her husband, the once powerful Bo Xilai, have any link to the crime or the cover-up by police under his control in Chongqing? How did the family become so rich? Were the business deals that led to Neil Heywood’s murder corrupt? They’re uncomfortable questions for the Communist Party to face.”
