How much do you care about Wang Lijun? Enough to read a 40-page Chinese story about him in Southern Metropolis Weekly?
Short of that, check out South China Morning Post’s summary of the story. Short of that, here are some excerpts.
Wang paid great attention to his public image. He employed a personal PR team of more than 20 police officers. All dressed in blue uniforms, they were nicknamed the “Smurfs”.
The Smurfs were armed publicists and secretaries, basically. Picture it.
Wang “invited” underground gun-makers to resume production by supplying them with equipment, funding and a place to work – a big cave in a remote town named Xiushan, bordering Guizhou province. The invitation worked and Wang’s entrapment plot proceeded as planned.
In September of 2008, Wang led thousands of special force police officers with submachine guns and bazookas to the cave. He flirted with the idea of shooting a bazooka, but another high-ranking official turned down the suggestion. Instead, they used dynamite to blow up the gun operation and destroy the cave.
A bazooka. The dude just upgraded the actor who’ll eventually portray him from Hung Yan Yan to Andy Lau.
Wang required his policemen to display “good taste” by the way they dress. During his term, he ordered that two sets of casual-style police uniforms, costing 8,000 yuan (HK$9,932) in total, be made for each police officer in Chongqing.
Good taste is important.
Businessmen Gong Gangmo, a convicted mafia boss who was arrested by Wang in 2009, said he was hung by his hands for eight days in a detention centre and beaten by the police. He said the police had covered the camera with a curtain so it could not be recorded.
Play with fire, you’ll get burned.
Wang also claimed to be an expert in arts and architecture. He is the owner of 150 patents and had designed police uniforms, police boots and police raincoats, among other creations.
The man is awesome, and sorely missed. When he’s out of jail in 15 years, we’ll see the Wang Lijun redemption story, I think. In America, he’d make seven digits lending his name out to ghost-written autobiographies and serial thriller novels. In China… to be continued.
Former Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun, who triggered the scandal when he told US diplomats about the killing in February, sliced off piece of Heywood’s heart as proof of the murder, reports have said.
That was reported by Michael Sainsbury in The Australian which is now behind a paywall.
At a guess, he probably gift boxed it and tried to sell it to US consular officials.
Picture this if you will. Wang, heading for the mortuary with Swiss pocket knife in hand, before the very hasty cremation. A flash of credentials to the attendant. Rolls up the sleeve and slices away.
To survive in the Sino-bureaucratic world, you have to be agile and keep an eye on every angle. (My commentary)
A former colleague of Wang’s in northeast China said he would sometimes perform the autopsies on executed convicts himself because he claimed he wanted to see if “their hearts were black or red”.
Killer account here
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/09/18/china-trial-wanglijun-idINL3E8KH25B20120918
He had a taste both for gritty police work and for the theatrical. In Tieling, his Mitsubishi jeep was famously tricked out with extra headlights on the roof, facing both front and back, so that on a dark night he could be seen coming from far away.”He would jump into his car in a black coat and shoot his gun into the sky,” remembered Mr Zhou. Malcolm Moore
He even had his own script writer, probably Sax Rohmer of Dr Fu Manchu fame, plus an overcoat fetish.
“Li Zhuang, we meet again”.
The full read from the NYT HERE.http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/world/asia/wang-lijun-ex-police-chief-may-face-trial-in-china.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://www.danwei.com/wang-lijun-and-his-smurfs/
Ur late