19 August 2012 Last updated at 23:48 ETThe wife of a disgraced Chinese politician has been given a suspended death sentence for murdering British businessman Neil Heywood. But who was Mr Heywood, and why did his death result in the worst scandal for the country's communist party in decades?
When Neil Heywood was found dead in a hotel room in the south-western city of Chongqing in November 2011, reports initially said the 41-year-old business consultant had died of alcohol poisoning and his body was cremated without a post-mortem examination.
But after friends raised doubts, saying he drank only occasionally, the UK government asked the Chinese authorities to reopen the investigation.
In April, the government said it was investigating Gu Kailai - the wife of sacked Communist Party official Bo Xilai - in connection with the case. Gu and Zhang Xiaojun, employed at Mr Bo's home, were charged with intentional homicide in July.
Gu was convicted at a one-day trial on 9 August in the eastern Chinese city of Hefei and was later given her sentence.
Friendship forged
Born in 1970, Mr Heywood enjoyed a privileged education at Harrow School and went on to study international relations at Warwick University.
According to the New York Times, friends described him as "charming but elusive", and "a maverick since his school days". They recalled him travelling across the US in a campervan and crossing the Atlantic on a yacht.
Mr Heywood had been a resident in China since the early 1990s where he learned fluent Mandarin in Beijing, met and married his Chinese wife Wang Lulu, and started a business career.
The father-of-two worked as a consultant to foreign businesses seeking investment in China.
He set up several companies, advised clients including Aston Martin, and is reported to have done work for Hakluyt & Co - a strategic information consultancy founded by former members of MI6.
John Russell, chief executive of London Taxi manufacturer Manganese Bronze, remembers Mr Heywood as a "very professional" operator.
"Neil did have an ability to work through contacts and build relationships," Mr Russell told the BBC.
"The way he handled his business with us was immaculate. He just went about his business in a thoroughly professional, very English, way."
Speculation that Mr Heywood was an undercover agent was dismissed by UK Foreign Secretary William Hague, who said he "was not an employee of the British government in any capacity".
Mr Heywood was "only an occasional contact" of the British embassy in Beijing, where he attended "some meetings in connection with his business", Mr Hague added.
British connectionIt was while living in the north-eastern port city of Dalian in the mid-1990s that Mr Heywood met the local mayor, Bo Xilai and his wife Gu Kailai, a lawyer.
Gu Kailai had connections to a law firm in Dorset and worked in the US.
In 2000, Gu Kailai came to Britain so her son Guagua could go to public school. The younger Bo was later admitted to Balliol College, at Oxford University. While at Oxford Mr Heywood helped him arrange a ball and the pair were known to meet when My Heywood was back in Britain.
By 2007, Bo Xilai was appointed Communist Party chief of Chongqing, and he went on to become one of China's most popular politicians and a possible contender for the leadership later this year.
However, he was sacked in March and is under investigation for allegedly flouting Communist Party rules.
The exact nature of Mr Heywood's role and his relations with the Bo family have been the subject of much speculation inside and outside China. At the very least, there were close business contacts between the Bo family and Mr Heywood.
Mr Bo and Mr Heywood's relationship became strained by 2010, according to some reports.
In the same year, Mr Heywood failed to secure a UK passport for his wife through the consulate in China. The BBC understands that the UK would now allow his widow to enter the country if she wished.
Mr Heywood returned to the party chief's region of Chongqing in November 2011, and was later found dead.
'Fleeing China'
Journalist Tom Reed knew Mr Heywood over the last few years and had met him shortly before he died.
Writing in the Times, he said Mr Heywood had once been "worried" about a rift with Mr Bo.
"He even considered fleeing China with his family," wrote Mr Reed. But by the time the businessman met him for dinner in November, "most evidently, there was no sense of fear".
However, another unnamed friend told the Wall Street Journal Mr Heywood had passed documents relating to Mr Bo to a lawyer in Britain as an "insurance policy". No such files have surfaced and the newspaper's other sources knew nothing of the records.
Reuters news agency has reported the businessman had threatened to expose a plan by Gu Kailai to move money abroad, according to two sources with knowledge of the police investigation.
But a source close to the Bo family told BBC Beijing correspondent Martin Patience that allegations against the family were "preposterous" and that the claims were part of a smear campaign against the family.
The source said the family was "devastated" by the death of Mr Heywood, who had been a friend of Bo Xilai - but there had been no business dealings between the two.
Widow 'suffering'
Ann Heywood, Mr Heywood's 74-year-old mother, who lives in south London, said the news of his death had been a "total shock".
And his widow Wang Lulu, speaking outside her home in a gated community near the outskirts of Beijing, told the BBC she was sorry she could not speak about the death, but was too sad.
The BBC's Michael Bristow said a close friend described how Wang Lulu was suffering, especially because she had to bring up her son and daughter.
The children have UK passports and attend an international school in Beijing. Their mother was last seen in Britain at her husband's memorial service at St Mary's Church, in Battersea, in December.
For now she remains with her children living at the family home in a private, tree-lined compound on the outskirts of Beijing.
Meanwhile, the political situation in China is in disarray and it remains to be seen exactly how Mr Heywood was involved with such a powerful family.
By Lin ZixuEpoch Times Staff Created: August 15, 2012 Last Updated: August 21, 2012
Ousted Bo Xilai and his wife Gu Kailai. (New Epoch Weekly Photo Archive)
The murder of a British businessman by the wife of an ambitious Chinese Communist regime leader raises many questions. Gu Kailai’s high-profile trial was all over in seven hours on Aug. 9 with no verdict released.
One of the most intriguing questions is why Gu Kailai, wife of Bo Xilai, killed Neil Heywood with her own two hands.
Gu claims that Heywood threatened her son’s safety, and that she had to kill Heywood to protect her son. Other reasons have been suggested like financial disputes and emotional entanglements. However, a closer look shows that none of these really hold water.
In reality, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) highest governing body—the Politburo—and its judicial system have been doing everything in their power to keep Gu’s real crimes under wraps. They fear that if the true story is known, it would unravel deep and far-reaching crimes perpetrated by the Party and former leader Jiang Zemin—namely, the unprecedented mass murder and live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners.
Let’s think about this: who is Gu Kailai’s son? He is Bo Guagua, son of Bo Xilai, who was being groomed by the CCP’s most ruthless faction to become the next Party leader.
The CCP is the world’s largest and bloodiest organized crime network. For someone like Neil Heywood to threaten Bo Xilai’s son, that’s like a lamb threatening a cub in a den of tigers.
Suppose Heywood really did threaten Bo Guagua. Even if that were true, Gu wouldn’t have needed to carry out Heywood’s murder herself.
In 2007, the son of a former Politburo member, Wu Guanzheng, was assassinated in a hotel room, but to this day it is unclear who did it. If the son of a powerful official can be knocked off without a trace, killing Heywood would have been a doddle. The murder would have been carried out seamlessly and no one would have ever linked his death with Bo Xilai’s family.
So let’s say that Gu Kailai killed Heywood for financial reasons. This also seems absurd. Bo and Gu have overseas assets worth at least US$6 billion. Giving a small fraction to Heywood as commission would not have been an issue. So, why would they really need to kill him?
The only thing that threatened Gu Kailai and her family was the legitimacy of the CCP itself in connection to her. That legitimacy will be left in tatters if the truth is revealed about the horrific crimes that Gu orchestrated: live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners and the sale of corpses.
Seeking rapid promotion via Jiang Zemin, who masterminded the persecution of Falun Gong starting in 1999, Gu and Bo were highly active participants. They transferred Falun Gong practitioners to Liaoning Province, harvested organs from living practitioners and sold their organs, effectively massacring thousands of people. And Neil Heywood was involved in these hideous crimes.
By overseeing these atrocities, the CCP has directly violated the international human rights standards established following the Nazis’ crimes against humanity and genocide during World War II. Or, to put it another way, the CCP has completely and blatantly undermined the fundamental moral foundation of the modern world.
If the Chinese public knew the truth, it would wake up and demand the CCP answer for its crimes. Likewise, most of the world’s democratic countries would not idly stand by and allow this to continue. Any democratic government that ignored the CCP’s crimes would be voted out by its people.
Then, why would a powerful woman personally commit murder?
Neil Heywood’s knowledge of these dirty secrets would have plagued his conscience, urging him to confess. So Gu Kailai really couldn’t risk letting him live.
The intense fear that Neil Heywood might expose the truth would have definitely made Gu kill Heywood personally. These are the real reasons behind her murderous act.
This is a deep-running and complicated case, but strangely the trial was carried out very quickly, which makes no sense from a legal perspective.
The brevity of the trial shows that Gu’s case threatens the very survival of the CCP, which does not dare face up to nor bear responsibility for the underlying secrets. This also explains why the CCP would help Gu Kailai cover up the truth, otherwise the entire CCP would face its demise alongside Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai.
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Mr Bo has not been seen since March. Initially, party leaders were assumed to want to deal with his potentially divisive case before a once-in-a-decade leadership transition this Autumn.
In April, Mr Bo was removed from his post in Chongqing and placed under investigation for "serious breaches of party discipline". He could also eventually face criminal charges as an accessory to Mr Heywood's murder.
But no results have yet been announced, and it seems that China's leaders have had difficulty reaching a consensus on how to deal with him. It is possible, according to one diplomatic source, that a decision will be postponed until after the leadership change.
Meanwhile another trial has to take place – that of Chongqing's former Police Chief Wang Lijun, whose flight to the United States consulate in Chengdu exposed Mr Heywood's death and sparked the current crisis.
For the past few months, Mr Bo has been under the scrutiny of the party's own disciplinary commission, a body headed by a former
Chongqing party chief, He Guoqiang, who is thought to be an enemy of Mr Bo's.
However, the commission is dogged by internal party politics, and one of Mr Bo's allies, Zhou Yongkang, heads the security apparatus that would provide information and evidence on Mr Bo's alleged offences.
Judging by previous cases, it may take much longer to complete the process. It took three years before Chen Xitong, a former mayor of Beijing, was put on trial for corruption and 18 months to bring Chen Liangyu, the former party secretary of Shanghai, to court.
Bo Yibo
The patriarch of the clan, he grew up under the Qing Dynasty, born to parents so poor they had to drown a newborn baby because they couldn’t afford to feed another mouth. He joined the Communist Party at the age of 17, and became a key organizer as the communists fought against both occupying Japan and the rival Kuomintang.
Bo Yibo was made a vice-premier soon after the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, only to be purged in 1966 as Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution took hold. The low point came when Mr. Bo was dragged before thousands in Beijing’s Workers Stadium, forced to wear an iron plaque detailing his supposed crimes.
He was rehabilitated after the death of Mao in 1976, and became a close confidant of Deng Xiaoping, Mao’s successor as "paramount leader." He opposed the political reform movement of the 1980s, and led the internal putsch that deposed then-party secretary Hu Yaobang. Three years later, he supported using force to crush the pro-democracy protests that erupted on Tiananmen Square after Mr. Hu’s death.
He died in 2007 at the age of 98.
Bo Xilai
Even before the rest of the world knew his name, he was one of China’s best-known politicians, a "princeling" (a term given to the sons and daughters of the Communist elite) with a populist touch rare in Chinese politics. The fourth of Bo Yibo’s seven children, he is believed to have served as a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution; some accounts suggest he may even have denounced his father at one point. As the family regained influence, Bo Xilai started a political career, rising through the ranks to eventually become party chief and mayor of the port of Dalian.
Many believed Bo Xilai’s rapid rise, and his family name, would earn him a spot on the Standing Committee of the Politburo as early as 2002, something his father lobbied for. However, he was passed over in favour of another "princeling," Xi Jinping, whose father, Xi Zhongxun, had also been purged and rehabilitated during the Cultural Revolution. (Xi Jinping is now poised to succeed President Hu Jintao.)
Bo Xilai’s assignment in 2007 to the southwestern city of Chongqing was initially seen as a form of banishment, but he instead used it as a base to build support for another run at the Standing Committee. He made himself the hero of the country’s leftists with his campaigns to reduce crime while reintroducing Mao-era slogans and songs. Before his long-time police chief entered a U.S. consulate, telling stories of corruption and murder, Mr. Bo was expected to finally join the Standing Committee this fall. Instead, he was purged from the party leadership. The 63-year-old’s political career seems over – for now, anyway.
Gu Kailai
The daughter of a prominent communist general, she has a law degree from prestigious Beijing University, where it’s believed she first met Bo Xilai.
Ms. Gu founded her own law firm and became one of China’s best-known lawyers. She claims to have been the first Chinese lawyer to win a case in a U.S. civil court when she successfully defended a Dalian company that had been sued for intellectual property violations.
As Mr. Bo rose in prominence, Ms. Gu, now 53, put her career on hold. The couple’s only son, Bo Guagua, told a newspaper in 2009 that his mother "lives like a hermit."
Protecting her son appeared to consume much of her time. According to testimony she gave during her seven-hour trial earlier this month, Ms. Gu used Neil Heywood, a 41-year-old Briton living with his family in Beijing, to ensure Bo Guagua got into an exclusive British boarding school and then later Oxford University. According to the official Xinhua record of her trial, Ms. Gu said the two had a falling out over money, during which Mr. Heywood threatened to harm her son. "I suffered a mental breakdown after learning that my son was in jeopardy," she told the court on Aug. 9.
Her confession has apparently spared Ms. Gu an immediate execution. Legal experts expect her sentence will be commuted to life in prison. It’s the same sentence given decades earlier to Jiang Qing, the wife of Mao Zedong. Blamed after Mao’s death for the excesses of her husband’s rule, Ms. Jiang received a suspended death sentence in 1979. She was in prison until 1991, when she committed suicide.
Bo Guagua
The 24-year-old playboy son of Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai, in recent years his flamboyant lifestyle had undercut his father’s attempts to portray himself as a champion of the poor. Guagua rode around Beijing in flashy sports cars, and pictures of him partying abroad were widely circulated online. He recently graduated from Harvard University’s prestigious Kennedy School of Government.
Other than the occasional e-mail to journalists, Guagua has stayed out of the public eye since his family’s fall from grace. Most recently, he denied there was any business deal gone wrong between his mother and Mr. Heywood, casting doubt on the official version of what happened.
Neil Heywood
The British businessman died in November, 2011, but no suspicions were raised until Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun dramatically sought refuge inside the U.S. consulate in Chengdu three months later. Mr. Heywood, who lived in Beijing with his wife and two children, is believed to have served for years as an unofficial "fixer" to the Bo family, allegedly helping them move hundreds of millions dollars out of the country over the years. Then came his apparent falling out with Ms. Gu, who lured him last November to a Chongqing hotel where she says she got him drunk on wine and then slipped him cyanide.
Wang Lijun
Bo Xilai’s police chief and longtime right-hand man, he brought the scandal to light by fleeing into the U.S. consulate . He told American officials that he had taped Ms. Gu admitting to murdering Mr. Heywood, and asked for political asylum. The request was passed to Washington, but refused, and Mr. Wang was eventually convinced to leave the consulate .
Mr. Wang, who was notorious in Dalian and Chongqing for his use of torture and abuse of due process while carrying out Mr. Bo’s anti-crime campaigns, was demoted in early February, a sign he had fallen out with his longtime patron. Four days later, he fled into the U.S. consulate.
He is expected to soon face a trial of his own, likely on charges related to his "unauthorized" visit to the U.S. consulate. A treason conviction would likely come with a death sentence.
Xi Jinping
China’s vice-president and the anointed heir to President Hu Jintao. He and Bo Xilai have long been portrayed as "princeling" rivals.
Their fathers stood on the opposite side of some of the key political crises of post-Mao China. While Bo Yibo lead the conservative putsch in 1986, and supported the Tiananmen Square crackdown three years later, Mr. Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun, was a lone dissenting voice among the Communist Party leadership in both instances.
Mr. Xi’s ascension to the Standing Committee of the Politburo in 2002 is seen as having come at the expense of Mr. Bo. The question many China-watchers are asking now is whether Mr. Xi – who is about to become the most powerful man in China – shares his father’s political views, or whether he harbours any sympathy for his fallen fellow princeling.
Who's who in China's Bo Xilai political scandal
By The Associated Press – 1 day ago
The scandal surrounding one of China's most high-profile politicians, Bo Xilai, whose wife has been given a suspended death sentence for the murder of a British man, is the messiest to strike the ruling Communist Party in years and exposes divisions just ahead of a crucial leadership transition in the fall. Here's a look at the leading characters:
— Bo Xilai: Disgraced former Communist Party secretary of Chongqing and one of the country's most prominent political figures. A former Commerce Minister and the son of one of the communist state's founding fathers, Bo was already in the party's 25-member Politburo and before the scandal was seen as a contender for the nine-member Standing Committee that runs China. Bo's flamboyant personality made him a polarizing figure among elites. Rumors had also swirled about the Bo family's wealth. He remains under a separate party investigation for unspecified wrongdoings.
— Gu Kailai: Bo's wife has been given a suspended death sentence — which is usually commuted to life in prison after two years — for killing British businessman Neil Heywood. State media said she confessed to poisoning him following a dispute over money and was worried that he had threatened her son's safety. She is said to have risen out of a trying childhood during nationwide upheaval to become a prominent lawyer and high-flying politician's wife. She was skilled at turning on the charm when the going was smooth, yet quick to turn hostile when crossed. Like Bo, she is the offspring of a prominent Chinese politician.
— Bo Guagua: Their 24-year-old son, who was educated in England and the United States, most recently at Harvard University. Guagua, who has appeared shirtless at parties in photos posted on the Internet, has said he attended social events as an Oxford University undergraduate to broaden his perspective. He denies accusations he received preferential treatment in admissions, that he was a poor student or that he drove a pricey sports car. Guagua is not believed to have returned to China since the scandal broke and his whereabouts are unknown.
— Wang Lijun: Wang was Chongqing's police chief before being demoted in February. He spent a night at the U.S. consulate in the city of Chengdu near Chongqing, apparently fearing for his life. He refused Bo's demands that he return to Chongqing and was instead taken into custody by investigators from the State Security Ministry. While in the consulate, Wang is believed to have alleged that Gu was behind Heywood's death, prompting the British government to ask China to launch a new investigation. In a surprising twist, people who attended the trial say the court heard evidence that Gu had informed Wang of her intentions and that for a time he too participated in planning the murder. Four of his former officers were sentenced to between five and 11 years in prison for helping cover up Gu's crime. Swirling rumors that Wang could face trial soon have yet to be confirmed.
— Neil Heywood: A British business consultant and Bo family friend, his body was found in a secluded Chongqing hotel last November. Chinese authorities originally blamed his death on excess drinking or a heart attack and his body was cremated without an autopsy. Subsequently, an official Chinese statement said he had a longtime business relationship with Gu and her son, Guagua, but that had deteriorated over financial disputes. Bo reportedly sought to block a police investigation after Wang came to him with his suspicions.
— Zhang Xiaojun: State media have referred to Zhang as a Bo family aide and a former Chongqing city staffer. Zhang has been sentenced to nine years' imprisonment for being an accessory to Heywood's murder. Under Gu's orders, he is said to have escorted the Briton from Beijing to Chongqing and carried the poison that Gu gave him.
— Patrick Devillers. A French architect, he was detained in Cambodia in connection with the scandal but not extradited. Instead he chose to fly to China on his own, apparently in order to give evidence in the case. Devillers had helped Bo rebuild the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian when Bo was the city's mayor in the 1990s, The New York Times reported in April. Peter Giles Hall, a British businessman who had done business with Gu, says Devillers and Gu appeared to be romantically involved and he had seen him holding her hand.
Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
20 August 2012 Last updated at 02:12 ET By John Sudworth BBC News, ShanghaiThe last chapter of a compelling murder mystery has just been written.
There is to be no executioner's bullet for the scheming murderess. It is quite a coup de theatre; the killer's life is saved because she had psychological problems and killed to protect her son.
So the case is closed, a terrible crime solved and a measure of justice given to both perpetrator and victim.
But on closer examination, this narrative seems all too neat and uncannily suited to one particular agenda.
And informed observers see the fingerprints of the Communist Party of China all over this outcome.
Towering figureOf course, Gu Kailai may well be guilty of the crime. In fact, the allegation has a ring of plausibility to it partly because of how it came to light.
Continue reading the main story“Start Quote
End Quote Mo Shaoping LawyerIt is undeniable that under the current political situation here, Bo Xilai's status and influence are extra-judicial factors that will have unavoidable impacts on the case”
If Gu Kailai has been framed, then one has to wonder whether the Chinese authorities could have found easier ways to do it.
The case only came to light when a senior police chief fled to a US consulate alleging murder and a major political cover-up, a deeply messy and embarrassing incident for China.
But assuming she did it, there are still plenty of reasons to meddle in the conduct of the trial.
The biggest one, of course, is the towering figure of Gu Kailai's husband, Bo Xilai, who has cast a long political shadow over this case from the start.
It is impossible to overstate just how important a figure he was.
As party chief in the megacity of Chongqing, he was a member of the politburo, one of the 25 most senior party officials in China. And he was tipped for even higher things.
So the revelation that his wife killed her British business associate, Neil Heywood, by getting him drunk and stuffing his mouth with cyanide would have sent shock waves through the highest levels of the party leadership.
At the very least, it would need careful handling.
But add to that the clear evidence of a major police cover up in Chongqing, a municipality in which Bo Xilai had direct control of the police, and it would quickly have begun to look like a major political scandal.
And finally, the suggestion that Neil Heywood may have fallen out over the assistance he gave the family in shifting large sums of money out of China raised the prospect of serious corruption.
If any of that came to light, it would risk tarnishing the reputation of the party itself - and in a year in which the Communist Party is about to undergo a delicate and carefully choreographed transition of power to a new generation of leaders.
'Status and influence'China's courts, like everything in Chinese society, are expected to bend to the will of the party.
Mo Shaoping, the lawyer who represents jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, has spent his career negotiating the blurred boundary between politics and the law.
"China is not really a country ruled by law," he said. "It regards the cost of breaching its own laws as insignificant."
"It is undeniable that under the current political situation here, Bo Xilai's status and influence are extra-judicial factors that will have unavoidable impacts on the case."
That is why many observers think the way the evidence has been presented and the conclusions reached are simply too convenient to be true.
Firstly, there is no mention of the possibility of financial corruption. Instead, Neil Heywood is said simply to have been in dispute with the family over a failed business deal.
And Gu Kailai is said to have killed him because she believed he was threatening her son.
Some newspaper articles have suggested that the defence-of-family line is designed to resonate with nationalist, anti-foreigner opinion in China.
In addition, it has given the judge an excuse to avoid sending Gu Kailai to the firing squad, thereby avoiding the risk that she would become a cause-celebre and the focus of even more international media attention.
"If Gu Kailai did poison Neil Heywood in order to protect her son, then according to Chinese law, the victim has faults too," Mo Shaoping explains. "The judge can use this to deliver a lower sentence."
And although four senior police officers have been put on trial for their part in the attempted cover-up, there has been absolutely no mention of what will happen to Bo Xilai.
"This is a criminal case, and society should see it as one," wrote the Communist Party tabloid, The Global Times, before the trial began.
Old scoresBut some commentators have suggested that, despite the party's best efforts, the trial has done the opposite, exposing political divisions and tensions long kept below the surface.
Continue reading the main storyTIMELINE: BO XILAI SCANDAL
- 6 Feb: Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun flees to the US consulate in Chengdu
- 15 Mar: Bo Xilai is removed from his post in Chongqing
- 20 Mar: Rumours suggest Mr Bo could be linked to the death of British businessman Neil Heywood
- 10 Apr: Bo Xilai is suspended from party posts and his wife, Gu Kailai, is investigated over Mr Heywood's death
- 26 July: Gu Kailai and Bo family employee Zhang Xiaojun are charged with killing Mr Heywood
- 9 Aug: Gu Kailai goes on trial for murder
- 20 Aug: Gu Kailai given suspended death sentence
Bo Xilai's success as politician was built partly on an appeal to old communist values, the public singing of "red songs," and a rejection of liberal economic reforms.
His family may be the author of its own downfall but it seems that old scores are now being settled.
The day before it was announced that Bo Xilai had been sacked from his position as party chief in Chongqing, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao appeared to rebuke him in public.
He urged further political and economic reform and warned that without it, China could slip back into the dark days of the Cultural Revolution, an apparent reference to Bo Xilai's leftist revival movement in Chongqing.
Bo Xilai's father, Bo Yibo, was himself one of China's most senior politicians in the 1980s and was instrumental in the purging of Hu Yaobang, a liberal reformer and one of Wen Jiabao's mentors.
"In terms of politics and policy there is a huge gap between Wen Jiabao and Bo Xilai," Dr Ding Xueliang, professor of social sciences at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said.
"It goes back to the 1980s, what may seem like ancient history to many people, but it is still fresh in the minds of China's modern leadership."
Unbreakable unity?As Gu Kailai begins her prison sentence, China's leaders will hope that they have done all that they can to limit the damage.
They are helped in that regard by their monopoly on the control of information.
Outside the court in Hefei earlier this month, as the trial began, we found very few people who had even heard of Gu Kailai.
The case has been mentioned by the official state media, but some searches and postings on the internet about the case have been blocked.
Soon a new leadership will be in place and the man currently serving as vice-president, 59-year-old Xi Jinping, is widely expected to be anointed as the country's next leader.
But one extraordinary court case has at least hinted at the divisions and cracks that still lurk below the facade of singular, unbreakable, party unity.
20 August 2012 Last updated at 04:52 ETChinese netizens responded immediately on China's various Twitter-like weibo microblogging platforms after Gu Kailai's sentence was revealed.
The names of some of the key players in the case - Bo Xilai, Neil Heywood - remain blocked, but it appears that controls over the name Gu Kailai have been relaxed on some sites.
At least two million posts containing the phrase "suspended death sentence" accumulated on Sina and Tencent weibos within two hours.
There are still signs of censorship among these - search results display irregularly and are accompanied by a message which says: "According to relevant laws and regulations and policies, part of the search results are not displayed."
But the censorship does not deter people from expressing their opinions, which in most cases consists of disapproval of what is seen as a light sentence.
'Prince versus commoner'Many microblog users asked why Gu Kailai received a suspended death sentence when other people convicted of murder in China would be executed.
Beijing rights lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan asked on his accredited Tencent Weibo: "Let us think - if it were an ordinary citizen who killed a foreigner for economic benefit, what would the verdict be?"
A Sina Weibo user in Guizhou province says: "Let's abandon the death penalty altogether! China has no bigger criminal than her, yet she is not sentenced to death?"
Others expressed discontent over perceived unfair treatment.
"If you apply it well, mental illness can work magic," commented one user in Guangzhou city. "Some use it to get acquitted, such as getting a death penalty suspended. Others use it to convict, such as forcing someone into mental illness treatment. So whether you want to get mental illness or not depends on your identity."
A Shanghai resident suggested the Communist Party was protecting its own.
"Even in the feudal age we know that a prince who committed a crime was punished like a commoner," the netizen said. "Why can't a party which claims to be mighty, glorious and always correct understand this theory?"
And in apparent reference to fugitive "bank killer" Zhou Kehua, shot dead in Chongqing, a weibo user in Henan province said: "A commoner in Chongqing who killed somebody can be shot dead without trial; the wife of the [former] Chongqing party secretary killed someone and just get a suspended death penalty?"
One Beijing user pointed out there was more to come: "Now we have Bogu Kailai's verdict. Next we should expect the result on how her husband [Bo Xilai] is to be tackled."
There is also speculation that Gu Kailai could eventually regain her freedom.
"Could there be a better script?" a user in Jiangsu province asked, predicting Gu Kailai will be given life imprisonment after two years and eventually leave jail on medical parole.
A Beijing resident said on Tencent Weibo: "Things just look different if you have some guanxi [connections]. A suspended death penalty is like nothing - just a year or two and she will be out."
Among the many messages, there are very few in support of Gu Kailai.
"Sister Kailai, let's face reality: It's fate," said a user in Changchun city. "At least I still support you."
And a resident in Guangxi said: "Suspended death penalty, this is probably the best outcome. You are always the lawyer of my heart."
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One day after her one-day trial, the murder case against Gu Kailai is making its way into the public domain, and it is proving to be a showcase of political engineering. Rarely has someone admitting to murder looked so sympathetic in doing so. The mitigating factors, the narrative, and the details have been carefully sculpted to ensure as little damage as possible to Gu and her husband, Bo Xilai, while shifting blame to those with less political clout—namely the deceased and the police officer who ratted them out. The trial was theatre—closed to everyone but hand-picked attendees, carefully planned and executed in a single day—so we are left to piece together accounts from someone purportedly in the courtroom (translated by law professor Don Clarke), the state news service, and other bits and pieces. Given all those various incentives to steer the narrative in one direction or another, it’s best to see this less as a simple story of what happened than as a narrative constructed out of facts, accusations, and political imperatives.
I won’t rehash the details here, but I’ll mention just a few of the most interesting prospects about where this goes:
—Will the British government object to this version of events? Gu has confessed to murdering British businessman Neil Heywood, but she is blaming the deceased for blackmailing her with threats to her son, Bo Guagua. According to an account publicly posted by courtroom observer Zhao Xiangcha, her son “telephoned his mother to report his having been detained and kidnapped. Gu was afraid of her son being kidnapped and killed [or] suffering bodily harm. First, she reported the case to the Chongqing police, and the then police chief, Wang Lijun, took the case. But because the case took place in England, and there was not any solid proof, it was impossible to take coercive measures. This then gave her the motive for getting rid of Heywood in order to protect her son.” She has depicted herself—and was helped in the depiction by prosecutors—as a protective mother driven to a frantic defense. According to Xinhua, she said: “To me, that was more than a threat. It was real action that was taking place. I must fight to my death to stop the craziness of Neil Heywood.”
—Will Wang Lijun get a tougher sentence than Gu Kailai? One of the interesting details in this has been the question of what will happen to Wang—the police chief who fled to the U.S. consulate, claiming his life was in danger. He revealed the murder of Heywood—violating the omerta that governs the senior ranks of the Communist Party—and then he vanished into Chinese custody. Will he be treated as a whistleblower or a traitor? Count on the latter. In court, Gu repeatedly emphasized that Wang was “insidious,” and the Xinhua account of the case noted that “Wang Lijun entered the United States Consulate General in Chengdu without authorization.”
—Will Heywood’s family or attorney come to his defense? Since the beginning, the Heywood family has been largely silent, but the official version of events has heaped accusations upon him. There have been rumors for months that Heywood gave documents to a lawyer in the United Kingdom that would tell his side of the story if anything were to befall him. Something did. If those documents exist, expect to see them begin to come to light.
—How much of the rap will Bo beat? Bo will be punished in some way, but, above all, the trial conspicuously limited any connections between him and the murder case. In the end, it seems, the Party leaders decided it was too damaging to let one of their own go down so hard. Bo now faces “discipline violations,” to be clarified later. Were there an Olympic event for vaulting over political hazards, he would have cleared the first hurdle with room to spare.
CCTV via APTN, File / AP
In this Aug. 9, 2012 file video image taken from CCTV, Gu Kailai, center, stands during her trial in the Hefei Intermediate People's Court in Hefei in eastern China's Anhui province
(HEFEI, China) — The wife of a disgraced Chinese politician was given a suspended death sentence Monday after confessing to killing a British businessman by poisoning him with cyanide in a case that rocked the country’s top political leadership.
A suspended sentence is usually commuted to life in prison after several years.
Sentenced along with Gu Kailai was a family aide who was given nine years’ imprisonment for his involvement in the murder of Neil Heywood, a former family associate, said He Zhengsheng, a lawyer for the Heywood family who attended the sentencing in this eastern China city.
The sentencing closes one chapter of China’s biggest political crisis in two decades, but also leaves open questions over the fate of Gu’s husband, Bo Xilai, who was dismissed in March as the powerful Communist Party boss of the major city of Chongqing.
His dismissal and his wife’s murder trial come at a sensitive time in China, with party leaders handing over power soon to a younger generation. At one time Bo was considered a candidate for a top position.
(MORE: In China, Brief Murder Trial of Ex-Official’s Wife Offers Few Answers)
The lawyer He said he had to discuss the verdict with the Heywood family and did not know if they would lodge an appeal.
“We respect the court’s ruling today. Thank you all for your concern,” He said.
State media say Gu confessed to intentional homicide at a one-day trial held here Aug. 9 under heavy guard. The media reports — the court has been closed to international media — say she and Heywood had a dispute over money and Heywood allegedly threatened her son.
Gu was accused of luring the victim to a Chongqing hotel, getting him drunk and then pouring cyanide into his mouth.
The family aide, Zhang Xiaojun, also confessed after being charged as an accessory. He had been expected to get a lighter sentence as state media reported from the trial that Gu planned the murder.
Security was tight outside the court on Monday. Police officers stood guard around the building. At least a half dozen SWAT police vans were parked on each corner, some of them carrying plainclothes security. The main road in front of the entrance was blocked by traffic cones.
Any ruling in the Gu case would have been politically delicate, and Chinese leaders may have decided to impose a lengthy prison term instead of death for fear that a more severe penalty might stir outrage or make Gu look like a scapegoat for her husband’s misdeeds, political and legal analysts say. The party says Bo was removed due to unspecified violations.
(MORE: Murder Trial Puts Spotlight on China’s Political System)
Cheng Li, an expert in Chinese elite politics at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the verdict was fair.
“My sense is that the Chinese public, including the legal profession, the majority will think it is well deserved,” he said.
Li said the ruling against Gu will set expectations for Bo to be dealt with severely.
“If Bo does not get put through the legal process in the next few months, Gu will be seen as a scapegoat,” he said.
The British Embassy, which had consular officials attend the trial, issued a statement Monday saying it welcomed the fact China had tried those it had identified as responsible.
The statement said Britain had told China it “wanted to see the trials in this case conform to international human rights standards and for the death penalty not to be applied.”
Gu’s arrest and the ouster of her husband sparked the biggest political turbulence in China since the bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests in 1989.
AP / GILLIAN WONG
MORE: How Bo Xilai’s Fall Will Affect China’s Leadership Transition
« Does it matter that Xinhua called the evidence against Gu Kailai “irrefutable”? | Main | Where Gu Kailai will likely spend her time: China's Club Fed »
August 19, 2012
How much time will Gu Kailai actually have to serve under Chinese law?
Gu Kailai has been sentenced to death with a two-year suspension. Under Art. 50 of the Criminal Law, if she commits no new intentional crimes while in prison, that sentence will be commuted after two years to life imprisonment. It can even be commuted to 25 years’ imprisonment if she “genuinely demonstrates major merit” (确有重大立功表现). And further reductions are possible after the initial commutation.
Under Art. 78 of the Criminal Law and a 2011 Supreme People’s Court directive, those sentenced to life imprisonment or a term of years (including as a result of a commuted death sentence) may have their sentences reduced for good behavior (that's my own term; Chinese law speaks of showing repentance or establishing merit) during their imprisonment. And various forms of good behavior are listed, including (in the 2011 SPC directive) paying compensation. Presumably that will not be a problem for Gu.
But there are limits: Art. 78 of the Criminal Law states that a death sentence commuted to life imprisonment may under no circumstances be reduced to less than 25 years of actual time served, and a death sentence commuted to 25 years’ imprisonment may under no circumstances be reduced to less than 20 years of actual time served, in each case counting from the date of the original commutation. And even less is possible: in its 2011 directive, the Supreme People’s Court simply overrode the Criminal Law and stated that a commuted sentence could ultimately be reduced to as little as 15 years of actual time served. [ADDITION: A colleague also points out the intriguing possibilities of medical parole even earlier after just 9 years of actual time served: see this post from Dui Hua Foundation.]
I can’t resist digressing here to point out that the 2011 SPC directive is pretty remarkable: only a few months before, on February 5, 2011, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee had passed an amendment to the Criminal Law, effective May 1, that specifically established the 25/20-year rule. Yet on Nov. 21, 2011, the Supreme People’s Court passed its directive (effective July 1, 2012) overriding this rule. Needless to say, the SPC has absolutely no authority to directly contradict NPC legislation in this way. They can’t even claim, as is often done, that the existing rule was out of date and simply needed to be changed.
August 19, 2012 in Commentary, News - Chinese Law | Permalink
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By Wen HuaEpoch Times Staff Created: August 14, 2012 Last Updated: August 21, 2012
Policemen stand guard outside the Intermediate People's Court in Hefei City, Anhui Province, on Aug. 10. Gu Kailai was tried here for the murder of British businessman Neil Heywoord. (Peter Parks/AFP/GettyImages)
The trial of Chinese billionaire Gu Kailai for the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood has been a sort of show trial. The point of the drama has been to hide great criminality rather than to publicize it.
According to accounts in state-run media, the court accepted Gu’s confession that she murdered Heywood out of fear that he might harm her son. It is also entertaining arguments from Gu that would justify leniency in her sentence, including remorse and a mother’s anxiety.
If the court had chosen to look into the business relationship between Gu and Heywood, they would have found the pair had profited over the course of 13 years from the murders of hundreds or thousands of individuals—the number of victims can only be guessed at. Those are the crimes that the proceedings in Hefei City Intermediate People’s Court have been meant to obscure.
The story began in Dalian City in northeastern Liaoning Province in 1999. Gu’s husband, Bo Xilai, had been mayor of the seaport city for six years. He chafed at his lot, seemingly exiled from the higher reaches of power.
Gu shared his discontent. Beautiful, stylish, tough, and smart, holding a master’s degree in politics from Beijing University, Gu struck at least one American, according to the Wall Street Journal, as the Jacqueline Kennedy of China. Dalian was too small a stage for her.
A conversation Bo had with then head of the CCP Jiang Zemin would change things forever for Bo and Gu.
The journalist Jiang Weiping reported this conversation in an article he published in 2009 after immigrating to Canada. In 2002 Jiang Weiping had published an article accusing Bo of corruption, and Bo rewarded him by arresting him on charges of exposing state secrets and inciting subversion and then had him sentenced to seven years in prison.
Bo’s chauffeur, a man named Wang, told Jiang Weiping what had transpired between Bo and Jiang Zemin.
“You must show your toughness in handling Falun Gong much like the toughness shown by Hu Jintao in handling the 1989 Tibetan riot; it will be your political capital,” Jiang Zemin told Bo.
Imprisoning Practitioners
Bo and Gu did not need any more encouragement. While many top central Party officials and provincial officials were less than enthusiastic when Jiang Zemin launched his campaign to eradicate the spiritual practice of Falun Gong on July 20, 1999, Bo and Gu seized on it as their ticket out of Dalian.
The city quickly became a hellhole for Falun Gong practitioners, and Bo’s ascent began. In 1999 he was named the head of Dalian City CCP—the most powerful position in Dalian. In 2000 he was named acting governor of Liaoning Province and then in 2001 governor. By 2002 he was a member of CCP Central Committee and had vaulted into national prominence.
By withholding their identities, practitioners protect those close to them.
Meanwhile, Falun Gong practitioners were flooding Beijing, seeking to tell the CCP to stop the persecution. The prisons and labor camps in Beijing and the surrounding areas were overflowing. Bo saw another opportunity to ingratiate himself to Jiang Zemin.
Bo took the lead in constructing and expanding large-scale prisons and labor camps in Liaoning Province including: Dalian Prison, Nanguanling Prison, Jinzhou Prison, Wafangdian Prison, Zhoushuizi Labor Camp, Yaojia Detention Center.
Bo also expanded the Masanjia Labor Camp in Shenyang City, making it the largest prison facility in China. He also expanded the Longshan Labor Camp, the Shenxin Labor Camp, and others.
Bo arranged to fill his newly refurbished facilities with the overflow from Beijing, so that his prisons and labor camps came to hold practitioners from all parts of China. In particular, Bo took those practitioners who were arrested in Beijing but refused to reveal their names.
Profitmaking Opportunity
While Bo and Gu first saw the persecution as a chance to climb up the CCP’s ladder, Gu quickly saw in all of the practitioners crowding Bo’s new jails something else: a chance for immense profits. According to a source familiar with the matter, Neil Heywood was there with her from the beginning as a trusted aide as she began making money from the organs and bodies of the practitioners.
Chinese dissection experts prepare a human body at the Von Hagens Plastination factory in Dalian, on Feb. 2, 2004. Von Hagens opened the first plastination factory in Dalian, but was soon followed by several imitators. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)
In August 1999, Gunther von Hagens opened the first corpse-processing factory in Dalian. Using a process von Hagens says he invented in the 1970s called plastination in which bodily fluids are replaced by polymers, the factory preserved human bodies for display and research.
In 1995, von Hagens had begun mounting exhibitions of his preserved bodies, turning his invention into a profitmaking industry. In fact, the exhibitions that von Hagens and his competitors mount in tours around the world have attracted audiences in the tens of millions and earned receipts in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
The factory was approved by the Dalian Bureau of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation and the Dalian Industrial and Commercial Administrative Management Bureau, with Bo personally involved in approving the registration.
Requiring an initial investment of US$15 million, the factory was located in the high-tech development zone of Dalian, a beautiful place close to the ocean and at the foot of mountains.
Von Hagens told the New York Times that he had set up the factory in Dalian because he had found cheap labor, eager students, few government restrictions, and easy access to Chinese bodies, which he said he primarily uses for experiments and medical research purposes, not for his exhibitions.
Next … Unclaimed Bodies
Experts have said that Gu Kailai, wife of disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai, employed a lookalike to take her place in court during her trial for the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood.
Two security experts familiar with facial recognition software said that the person shown in state television footage of the courtroom was not Kailai.
According to the Daily Mail, Gu looked plumper than before, in contrast to most Chinese prisoners who lost weight in jail, and experts claimed that the woman who appeared for the sentencing could not be the real accused. If true, the real Kailai, 53, could have entered into a deal with Communist Party chiefs and be spending her time under house arrest, the report added.
According to the report, pictures have shown Kailai wearing a white shirt and black suit in the dock, where she stood calmly and praised the guilty verdict against her. I feel the verdict is just and fully reflects the courts special respect for the law, its special respect for reality and, in particular, its special respect for life, Kailai said.
According to the report, she apologized for the great losses to the [Communist] Party and the country, for which I ought to shoulder the responsibility and described the case as a huge stone weighing on me for more than half a year.
The court also found Gus actions reflected a psychological impairment, but did not elaborate, the report concluded.
Tags: Gu Kailai lookalike, murder British businessman Neil Heywood, world news
HONG KONG — A Chinese court has suspended Gu Kailai’s death sentence for the cyanide murder of a British businessman. But Ms. Gu, the wife of the disgraced Communist Party boss Bo Xilai, is headed for a long stretch in the can, the clink, the hoosegow, the pen, the joint, the slammer, the Big House.
Ms. Gu, 53, is probably bound for Qincheng Prison, the notorious facility that seems to have housed almost every corrupt party crook and major political dissident in the history of modern China.
Qincheng, for all its notoriety as a maximum security prison, is hardly Robben Island or the Supermax facility in Colorado. Some are even calling it China’s “Club Fed,” a reference to the relative comforts at some U.S. federal prisons for white-collar criminals.
A New York Times story in 1992 described Qincheng as “one of China’s most comfortable penitentiaries.”
The Shenzhen Economic Daily published a story in May about Qincheng, located on the outskirts of Beijing. (The Web site eChinacities.com did a translation into English.)
The prison was built in 1958 as a secret project — Project No. 156 — with assistance from the Soviet Union, the paper said. It is reportedly the only prison operated by the Ministry of Public Security; all other prisons are overseen by the Ministry of Justice.
Until the 1960s, the paper said, “most prisoners were old Manchu officials, Japanese prisoners of war, and KMT nationalist war criminals of Major General rank and above.” During the Cultural Revolution, leading “counterrevolutionaries” filled the cells.
Li Lisan, a prominent Communist revolutionary and Politburo member, was arrested by Red Guards in 1967, and he and his Russian wife were sent to Qincheng. Her seclusion was so total that “I almost forgot how to speak Russian,” she said in a Times story in 2000.
From the late 1970s through the ’80s, “most prisoners were those associated with Lin Biao and the ‘Gang of Four,’ ” the paper said. When Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife, was arrested soon after his death in 1976, she was sent to Qincheng. Her early years at the prison certainly didn’t break her: At her trial in 1980, unrepentant, she told the court: “I was Chairman Mao’s dog. Whomever he told me to bite, I bit.” The government said she committed suicide while still imprisoned in 1991.
More recently, corrupt senior officials, high-profile student leaders and antigovernment writers have been sent to Qincheng. Ordinary criminals are sent elsewhere.
“That is to say, not just anyone can serve their sentence at Qincheng Prison — it is therefore perhaps the final ‘privilege’ given to corrupt officials.”
China’s most famous political prisoner, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, spent 18 months in Qincheng, starting in 1989. A subsequent conviction reportedly has landed him “in a cell with five common criminals at Jinzhou Prison in Liaoning Province” about 300 miles from his home (and his wife) in Beijing.
Wang Dan, one of the leaders of the Tiananmen Square student protests, recalled his detention in Qincheng “along with several hundred other students and intellectuals.”
“On a particularly cold winter morning,” he wrote in The Times in 2010, “I sat on my bed and picked up my copy of The People’s Daily, the government newspaper we were allowed to read, and saw that Nelson Mandela had been released from prison.”
The original Qincheng Prison had cells in three-story brick units, simply referred to as Buildings 1 through 4 — Jia (甲), Yi (乙), Bing (丙) and Ding (丁). In 1967, six more blocks were added, numbered 5 through 10.
“The guards are carefully selected,” said Wei Jingsheng, the former dissident and political prisoner, in a scathing critique of what he called “the “20th century Bastille.” “One criterion is age; prisoners report never seeing guards over 20. They are replaced at regular intervals.”
According to the Shenzhen paper, “The walls of cells for major criminals are specially padded with rubber to ensure that the prisoners cannot commit suicide by running into the walls. The only furniture in each cell is a small bed set about a foot off the ground, and when a prisoner wants to write a ‘confession,’ a school desk will be provided.”
The doors are iron-plated “with a peephole at toilet level and at eye level,” and guards “monitor the rooms constantly.”
At one point, during the 1960s, the quality of prisoners’ meals was based on their rank. “The person responsible for cooking for the 204 high-level prison cells was a Class B chef that had been transferred to Qincheng Prison from the Beijing Hotel,” the paper said. “The dishes he served included shark’s fin and sea cucumbers.”
Mr. Wei said the Qincheng guards were “ingenious” in using food to manipulate prisoners: “Food is withheld as a means of punishment. One of the lightest and most common punishments is first to starve the prisoner and then give him or her a bowl of very greasy noodles as ‘compensation.’ ”
“According to descriptions given by those who have visited in more recent years,” the paper said, high officials still receive special living conditions at Qincheng Prison. Their prison cells are larger, and some have desks, bathrooms, sit-down toilets and washing machines. They are allowed time to read books and People’s Daily, and they get two hours of TV at night.
High-level inmates also may receive visits, clothing and private medical care from family members. “Although prisoners are given uniforms,” the paper said, “they are generally not required to wear them.”
An excerpt, slightly condensed, from Mr. Wei’s essay:
The inmates’ lives are governed by all sorts of irrational regulations. They have to sleep facing the door. To turn one’s back to the doorway is not permitted, and if one happens to do so while sleeping, he is awakened, over and over if necessary, until the prisoner learns to face the glass pane. There was a Tibetan who, after sleeping on one side of his face for more than 10 years, developed a swollen ear that became infected and numb.
Sanitary conditions are poor. Soap is not provided, and bathing is permitted only once a month, regardless of the season. A few privileged prisoners are given semi-annual physical examinations.
Qincheng is enough to strangle one’s will. The place could almost be called a dungeon, or a psychiatric institute. In Qincheng, even those who were once imprisoned by the enemies of the Communists are victims of modern techniques to destroy body and mind.
The Shenzhen newspaper said a new facility, Yancheng Prison, is being phased in as the default prison for senior officials convicted of nonviolent “duty crimes” or malfeasance and corruption.
“Once Yancheng Prison is fully operational,” the paper said, “it is likely that Qincheng Prison will ‘retire’ and be changed into a common lockup for prisoners awaiting trial.”
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