Bo Xilai was led away in handcuffs yesterday after a court sentenced the one-time rising star of the Chinese Communist Party to life in prison for corruption, bringing down the curtain on China’s biggest political scandal in decades.
The Jinan intermediate people’s court deprived Bo of political rights for life and confiscated all his personal assets.
While Bo is likely to appeal the sentence, the verdict brings to an end the career of one of China’s most successful populist politicians, who had a high profile in his various guises as party boss in the southwestern city of Chongqing, as trade czar and as mayor of the rich coastal city of Dalian.
Bo (64) was the media-savvy, shining light of the Communist Party who looked destined for the top until he suddenly disappeared from public view in April last year after a scandal set off by his wife Gu Kailai’s poisoning of British businessman Neil Heywood.
He was convicted of taking 27 million yuan (€3.26 million) in illegal payments from prominent tycoons.
“It confirms the rules of the game for errant top leaders post-Mao Zedong remain unchanged, hence Bo was spared the death sentence but given the maximum sentence available to someone of his rank,” said Steve Tsang of the China Policy Research Institute at the University of Nottingham.
While Bo is clearly not expecting a reversal of verdict under the current political set-up, he may be betting on the system not surviving for long, in which case his courageous public defiance should put him in a better position, said Mr Tsang.
There had been speculation that Bo could even have been executed, as a way of permanently removing him.
However, he has lingering support within the upper echelons of the Communist Party and it is unlikely to have tolerated the killing of one of their own.
“Despite the great exception of Deng Xiaoping who came back from the political graveyard three times, he is highly unlikely to ever emerge again as a leader,” Kerry Brown, professor of Chinese politics at the University of Sydney, said in a commentary for the BBC.
“With Bo Xilai’s demise, the Communist Party of China has lost the most talented politician of his generation. It is a bit like the UK Labour Party dismissing Tony Blair just before 1997 when it stood to win the election that year, or the Democrats in the US in 1992 dumping Bill Clinton. Bo’s charisma and his natural political gifts put him in the same league as these figures.”
Bo is more likely to suffer the same fate as other high-level figures toppled, such as the late Beijing mayor Chen Xitong, toppled in the late 1990s, and former party leader Zhao Ziyang, ousted for talking to student leaders ahead of the crackdown in 1989.
Chinese president Xi Jinping has used the case to signal his determination to push through his anti-corruption campaign.
Rule of law
The leadership will also use the case as an example of how China's rule of law is a force to be reckoned with, although it is likely to be seen as a triumph of justice outside China.
There was lingering support for the purged politician online.
Bu neng xiao yu wrote on the Sina Weibo microblog service: “I have lived in Chongqing for 10 years and I experienced what he did for Chongqing people. Leaving his own crimes aside, I feel it’s really not worth it to have such a wife.”
Bo is likely to serve his sentence in Qincheng prison near Beijing, and there has been some online commentary over the facility, which is seen as being too soft, with no uniform, adequate living space and medical facilities.