Bo Xilai

Early Life and Family Background

Bo Xilai was born on 3 July 1949 in Beiping (present-day Beijing). His father, Bo Yibo, was a senior Communist Party elder and former Vice Premier who was purged during the Cultural Revolution. After the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, Bo Xilai took part in Red Guard factions including 'West Pickets' (Xijiu) and 'United Action' (Liandong); after fleeing south with his parents, both were seized and brought back to Beijing for denunciation in early 1967. From January 1968 to November 1972, Bo was held at a juvenile reform facility in Beijing's Lishuiqiao Beiyuan on account of his family background, and made to perform labor. From 1972 he worked at a Beijing hardware repair factory, before enrolling at Peking University's history department in 1978 and later earning a master's degree in international journalism at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' graduate school.

Career: Dalian, Liaoning, and the Ministry of Commerce

From 1984, Bo held posts including deputy party secretary of Jin County, Liaoning, and deputy secretary-general of the Dalian party committee. He served as deputy party secretary and mayor of Dalian from 1993 to 1999, overseeing urban greening and investment-promotion projects, before being promoted to Liaoning provincial party standing committee member and Dalian party secretary in September 1999. He became acting governor of Liaoning in 2000 and formally took office as governor in 2001. In February 2004, with Commerce Minister Lü Fuyuan seriously ill, the central leadership transferred Bo to Beijing as deputy party secretary of the Commerce Ministry's party group; he succeeded Lü as Minister of Commerce after Lü's death in May 2004 and held the post until December 2007, overseeing China's post-WTO trade negotiations and handling disputes including textile and footwear trade frictions with the European Union.

The Chongqing Era: "Singing Red, Striking Black" and the "Chongqing Model"

In November 2007, Bo was elected to the 17th Central Committee's Politburo and appointed Chongqing Party Secretary the same month. In Chongqing he pursued a governing approach combining economic development and infrastructure investment with mass cultural campaigns such as "singing red songs" and a large-scale anti-organised-crime drive known as "striking blacks" — an approach widely referred to as the "Chongqing Model," which drew extensive domestic and international attention and debate and made him a widely discussed contender for the Politburo Standing Committee ahead of the 18th Party Congress in 2012.

The Heywood Case and the Wang Lijun Incident

On 13 November 2011, British businessman Neil Heywood was found dead in a hotel room in Chongqing's Nanshan district. Chongqing police initially attributed the death to alcohol poisoning, and the body was cremated without an autopsy on 18 November. Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun subsequently learned from Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, that she had poisoned Heywood, and secretly recorded her account as evidence. On 28 January 2012, Wang reported Gu's involvement to Bo Xilai; the following day Bo struck Wang and removed him as police chief. On 6 February 2012, Wang Lijun entered the US Consulate General in Chengdu, remaining for roughly a day before leaving and being taken to Beijing for investigation — triggering a central-government inquiry into Bo Xilai. Bo was removed as Chongqing Party Secretary on 15 March 2012; suspended from the Politburo and Central Committee on 10 April; and expelled from the Party and referred to judicial authorities on 28 September 2012.

Trial and Sentencing

Gu Kailai was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for Heywood's murder by the Hefei Intermediate People's Court on 20 August 2012; Wang Lijun was sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment for bending the law for selfish ends, defection, abuse of power, and bribery by the Chengdu Intermediate People's Court on 24 September 2012. Bo Xilai's own trial, on charges of bribery, embezzlement, and abuse of power, was held publicly at the Jinan Intermediate People's Court in Shandong from 22 to 26 August 2013, with proceedings broadcast in real time via the court's official microblog account — the first time a trial of an official at this level had been made public in this way in China. On 22 September 2013, the Jinan court sentenced Bo to life imprisonment for bribery, 15 years for embezzlement, and 7 years for abuse of power, combining these into a single life sentence with lifetime deprivation of political rights and confiscation of all personal assets. Bo appealed, and on 25 October 2013 the Shandong Higher People's Court rejected the appeal and upheld the original verdict.