For those who just can’t get enough of the Bo family saga, China Navis has a fairly extensive collection of photos of Bo Guagua — son of Xilai and Gu Kailai — both as a young child in China and growing up overseas.

A lot of these photos you’ve already seen, like the one in which he and his friends pretend to pee on a metal gate, and his graduation photos from Harvard, but others, perhaps not. Take a look at this sampling:

What strikes me about a lot of these — especially the last two — is how typical they seem. That last photo, down to the watermarked timestamp, exists in some variation in thousands of family albums in the homes of Chinese Americans and Chinese Brits, and millions more, probably, across China. (I tell you this from experience.) Look at it: just a young boy doted on by two grandparents, no added significance, nothing artificial about it, no politics.

Bo Guagua led a fortunate life, a privileged one, but from the perch of retrospect, we see these pictures and know, now, that there was an expiration date on his perfect world. (And we also know, judging by his parents’ testimony in the last few days, that his private family life was likely marked by turmoil and tumult; we can imagine how many late-night arguments between his parents he endured.) Especially poignant are the photos of him with mom and dad — showing his mother how to use a Mac, posing with a father in the midst of a meteoric political rise. These are moments in time captured forever, before time went ahead and tore everything apart.

Bo Xilai’s Son Bo Guagua Growth and His Life Overseas Photos (China Navis)

In a two-paragraph statement to the New York Times, Bo Guagua — the son of Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai, convicted last August of murdering British businessman Neil Heywood — said he has been denied contact with his parents for the past year and a half, and hopes his father gets a chance to defend himself at his trial that is scheduled for Thursday.

Then he dropped a big “however”:

I hope that in my father’s upcoming trial, he is granted the opportunity to answer his critics and defend himself without constraints of any kind. However, if my well-being has been bartered for my father’s acquiescence or my mother’s further cooperation, then the verdict will clearly carry no moral weight.

It’s a sly remark. In Bo Guagua’s view, his father is not being “tried” for bribery, corruption, and abuse of power, but persecuted, like Ned Stark, and only through the noble, self-sacrificing gesture of bargaining for his son’s well-being will he acquiesce to his accusers.

What else is a son to think?

The second of the two paragraphs is interesting, too:

My mother, who is now silenced and defenseless, cannot respond to the opportunistic detractors that attack her reputation with impunity. She has already overcome unimaginable tribulation after the sudden collapse of her physical health in 2006 and subsequent seclusion. Although it is of little comfort to my anxiety about her state of health, I know that she will continue to absorb all that she is accused of with dignity and quiet magnanimity.

Opportunistic detractors? You’d think he doesn’t live in the US, judging by how little he understands the way media works. Look on the bright side though: if Gu Kailai had been tried in the US, Jay Leno would still be cracking jokes. Or is Guagua, perhaps, talking about the Heywood family demanding millions as compensation to the death of Neil? As if that weren’t standard operating procedure.

Anyway. Again, what’s a son to do?

Bo Guagua’s Statement (NY Times)

In a 3,600-word piece, Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy of Britain’s The Sunday Times lay bare the myth of Neil Heywood. They argue that far from being an intrepid power broker living astutely within the inner circles of China’s elite, the murdered Briton was a “failed businessman,” a “chancer,” an “irritant,” and a liar who lucked into his connection with Bo Xilai, and was killed after a miscalculation on both his part and Gu Kailai’s. The piece, titled “Lost in China,” reads at times like a direct repudiation of the Wall Street Journal’s story last week, “Briton Killed in China Had Spy Links.” (Both are paywalled; we wrote about the WSJ piece here.) Writes The Sunday Times: “[Heywood's] 007 numberplate — even his mobile phone number ended with the same digits — fuelled fanciful stories that he had been an agent of British intelligence.”

After a year-long investigation for Channel 4′s Dispatches, based on numerous conversations with friends, business colleagues, diplomatic sources and a Chinese contact who knew both Heywood and the Bo family intimately, we can reveal the real Neil Heywood.

Far from being a top-level fixer or spy, he was a failed businessman who found himself caught up in a situation he could not control. He then made a fatal miscalculation that led to his murder.

According to The Sunday Times, Heywood arrived in China from England in 1992 and moved to Dalian in 1995, where he taught English. When he traveled to Beijing in 2000 to register a marriage with a Dalian girl by the name of Wang Lulu, he caught the attention of the British embassy, seemingly for no other reason than because he was a Briton in a place where there were few.

Kerry Brown, first secretary, was intrigued.

“At that time there weren’t a huge number of British business people based outside Beijing,” Brown said. “Neil Heywood seemed a pretty positive character, very British.” However, when Brown visited Heywood in Dalian months later and found him wandering about in jeans and a jumper, he wondered about his business acumen: “He seemed to just be drifting by.”

The story continues. Eventually, “after reading in a newspaper that Bo Xilai’s son had gone to England and was studying at Harrow, Heywood spotted an opening.” He got in touch.

The Sunday Times compellingly argues that Heywood did not, as has been reported elsewhere, help Bo Guagua get into Harrow. “Guagua was already at the school by the time Heywood came on the scene. In fact, he met Guagua and his mother in 2002 at a Chinese restaurant: the Royal China, in Baker Street, London.” But Heywood’s connection with the boy was nonetheless significant, because it would lead to his demise.

Nevertheless, Gu agreed to help Heywood out of his financial struggle, in acknowledgment of the years he had looked after Guagua. In late 2007, she introduced Heywood to a property developer who wanted to build a vast estate of Englishstyle houses outside Chongqing. “It was purely a gesture of friendship,” the source said. “She was never a participant in that project, nor a beneficiary.”

Everything Heywood touched seemed doomed. By 2008, he had been shut out of the development for failing to bring the British investment he had promised. That summer, when the bill arrived for his children’s school fees, a distraught Heywood sent an email to Guagua, asking that Gu “compensate him in cash for the failed project and for his years looking after Guagua”, according to the source. He asked for “tens of millions of pounds”.

The family was staggered. “It was absurd to ask for an extraordinary amount for merely having run the most convenient of errands, and even more extraordinary to ask Gu Kailai for compensation for the exclusion from a project,” the source said.

Sensing a growing crisis, Guagua sought to get his mother and Heywood together at a teahouse near Tiananmen Square during the Beijing Olympics of 2008. Heywood backed down. He apologised to everyone.

“Neil suggested that he didn’t really mean all the sum he asked and he was just seeing if they could lend him a hand,” the source says.

In April 2010, Heywood returned to Britain, after his firm had been temporarily struck off the companies register for failing to post its accounts. He was forced to pay for an expensive High Court appeal to get the judgment suspended so he could settle his debts without incurring a credit blacklisting.

We pause here to note that the picture we get is not of a cunning baron who wielded actual influence, but a bumbling, desperate expat who found himself suddenly knocked off his pedestal occupied by China’s many “exalted laowai” — those who, arriving early to the scene, were often overestimated by the many people they encountered simply because of their foreignness.

As it turns out, the Bo family also overestimated Heywood — wrongly — and that cost Heywood his life:

His debts mounting, in early 2011 Heywood emailed Guagua, again demanding money. This message was far more aggressive than the first. It was to prove a fatal mistake. Guagua, according to the source, told his mother about the emails in the presence of the Chongqing police chief, Wang Lijun, who had investigated Gu’s poisoning and become close to her. A few days after the Heywood conversation, Wang asked to see Guagua to talk about security. The source said Wang was determined to persuade the Bo family that Heywood was a dangerous character.

“When Guagua voiced scepticism that Neil could have been a threat, he [Wang] would reply something like, ‘You don’t know their tactics’ or ‘The people who seem the most innocent can be the most dangerous’.”

The Sunday Times built its story on a rolodex of anonymous sources, some sounding downright dopey with quotes such as, “[Gu Kailai] just doesn’t have a trace of violence in her,” but the article is internally consistent. At the very least, the image of Heywood as opportunistic foreigner is more recognizable to many of us than the image of him as suave businessman-cum-informant. RFH, in one of our earliest pieces on this scandal on March 28, alluded to this:

Heywood worked for Hakluyt, a corporate intelligence firm founded by former MI6 officers (so kind of like the Feather Men, then?) supposedly as what the Chinese poetically call a “white glove,” but we – you and me, guv – would call, more prosaically, a bagman. There’s nothing surprising about this. The British economy is run on agents, consultants, go-betweens, middle men and people who generally have nothing to offer except inserting themselves between mutually beneficial parties and making off with a fixer’s fee. The question here is, why are the likes of Bo running with this (apparently) small fry?

It’s a question that has, apparently, bothered The Sunday Times, too. If Heywood was so damn good, as other media would have you believe, how did he keep such a low profile, inspiring neither confidence nor, it seems, memory from most of his acquaintances?

The Sunday Times concludes:

All that is certain is that Neil Heywood, an idle, wellmeaning chancer, fell into a trap, partially of his own making, and that his death triggered the biggest scandal to hit China since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.

You’ll believe it if you’ve known people like him. “Sunday Times piece on Neil Heywood only reporting I have read about him that rings true (laowai in China in 1990s small circle…),” tweeted Danwei founder Jeremy Goldkorn. The responses suggest that the story you choose to believe reveals more about yourself than anything else:

Alexander Yuan / AP

If you were counting, the “trial” lasted all of a few hours, ending just now with Gu Kailai not contesting the charge that she murdered British businessman Neil Heywood. So much for transparency of law. Did we learn anything from this process? Gu was never going to win their game, so she didn’t play. A date for a verdict hearing will be announced later, but why should any of us bother caring? She will get a death sentence with a two-year reprieve of execution, and then she’ll get to live out the rest of her days in a glorified retirement home for “jailed” Party officials. Something like this. No one will remember to execute her, or that she committed murder. Next year, she will be a trivia question at some esoteric quiz in a Chelsea bar, and only one or two teams will remember that her husband’s name was Bo Xilai. Bo Guagua, meanwhile, will continue being Bo Guagua, which we imagine can’t be too difficult. The rich will continue feeding off everyone else’s work and sending their riches abroad. The skies will be blue, on some days. A man will wake up and, motivated by a TED talk he heard the previous afternoon, will choose to make someone’s day a little better, and a street beggar, that moment, will die.

Bo Guagua graduated yesterday from Harvard Kennedy School. Adam Samberg gave a speech, and with that, another lot of wide-eyed, partied-out co-eds officially enter the workforce, ready to displace the infirm and ineffectual. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: the kids these days will spell the end of us all. They’re just carrying on an age-old ritual of societal molting, but I suspect this generation will be more merciless than the rest.

By the way, did you know Bo Guagua also graduated from Oxford? I dunno, seems important.

By Gregory K. Shapiro

Last month, Bo Guagua brought some rather unwelcome attention to Harvard, managing in one fell swoop to both draw further ridicule to himself and to affirm every popular stereotype of Harvard students as arrogant, out-of-touch elitists. Perhaps unintentionally, he’s also drawn attention to an ongoing practice by Harvard of welcoming top leaders and their children — from China and other countries — to study. I refer you to today’s article in Slate titled “The East Is Crimson” — and I eagerly await, if I may say so, for Slate’s followups, “The East Is Columbia Blue” and “Oh Yeah, It’s Also Orange And Black.”

Harvard’s practice of accepting the leaders of tomorrow has been going on for at least over a decade, and was readily visible during my time as an undergraduate in the mid-2000s. I counted among my classmates the grandson of a former Chinese head of state and the son of the head of the Iraq’s Kurdish resistance movement during the Saddam years. (They kept low profiles.) I have no doubt that children of other foreign leaders were on campus but simply never entered my social circle. Certainly each of these students gained acceptance to Harvard on their own merits, and it’s not hard to see why Harvard would perceive these exceptional individuals as valuable additions to the school’s academic community. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that they also bring a very different set of expectations to campus with them. From their first day of class, they already possess the professional and personal relationships needed to ensure lofty careers once they exit the school. Certainly the Harvard degree is valuable for them, if only for the brand name, but they don’t have nearly as much to gain from it as your typical whitebread suburban student.

The princelings I knew at Harvard were incredibly smart and capable, but academics was often a decidedly secondary priority for them. Those that I knew were also busy pursuing side projects, or stayed involved with affairs back home, or were off racking up guanxi whenever the opportunity allowed. Sure, they went to class, sometimes; but usually just enough to make sure that the Harvard stamp of approval would be there waiting for them at the end of four years.

As embarrassing as Bo Guagua’s existence has become for everyone, I can’t imagine Harvard will suddenly start to resist the allure of opening its gates to the children of foreign leaders. However, even if Xi Jinping’s daughter — currently an undergraduate at Harvard — and the next crop of Chinese princelings manage to earn their Harvard pedigree with fewer drunk photos, Harvard still shouldn’t expect them to always integrate seamlessly into the community. Most of them have enough common sense and personal drive to spend their time in more productive ways than Bo Guagua does. But even if they show up to class, or stay out of the New York Times, they’ll certainly also be pursuing agendas of their own.

Our contributor is a Harvard alumnus currently working in Beijing.

Pictured: Bo Guagua and Madalyn Starkey (via Yahoo)

(You should click on that Madalyn Starkey link if you have no idea why this picture’s here.)

(H/T Katie)

I don’t normally read the Harvard Crimson, but I’m going to guess that newspaper just got its finest scoop of the year. Bo Guagua corresponded with staff writers Hana N. Rouse and Justin C. Worland (what’s with the middle initials? Must… suppress… prejudice), and wrote:

Recently, there has been increasing attention from the press on my private life. As a result of these speculations, I feel responsible to the public to provide an account of the facts. I am deeply concerned about the events surrounding my family, but I have no comments to make regarding the ongoing investigation. It is impossible to address all of the rumours and allegations about myself, but I will state the facts regarding some of the most pertinent claims.

British spelling on rumors is interesting if only for the fact that you know the Crimson didn’t edit any part of this letter. Style guide? Fuck it. It’s BO GUAGUA!

The rest of it reads like a resume. Excerpts:

My examination records have been solid throughout my schooling years. In the British public examination of GCSEs, which I completed at the age of 16, I achieved 11 ‘A Stars,’ whereas the necessary requirement is no more than 9 and ‘A’ grades are considered good marks. I also earned straight A’s for both AS level and A-level Examinations at the ages of 17 and 18, respectively.

And:

At the University of Oxford, I studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics. I was a ‘tripartite’, being enrolled in all three subjects, rather than dropping one in the second year, as is the norm. Upon graduating, I earned a 2:1 degree (Second Class, First Honours) overall and achieved a First in Philosophy.

And:

During my time at Oxford, it is true that I participated in ‘Bops,’ a type of common Oxford social event, many of which are themed. These events are a regular feature of social life at Oxford and most students take part in these college-wide activities.

He also loves Oxford, apparently, as he is more than happy to tell his Harvard readers.

Like many other university students, I also devoted time and energy to extra-curricular activities. For example, I debated in the Oxford Union and served as president of the Politics, Philosophy and Economics Society. These extra-curricular activities enabled me to broaden my perspective, serve the student community, and experience all that Oxford has to offer. I am proud to have been the first mainland Chinese student to be elected to the Standing Committee of the Oxford Union, and I truly value the close friendships I formed with my fellow students.

Finally:

I have never driven a Ferrari.

But as commenter “senior” wonders:

Did he drive a Porsche?

So… Bo Guagua, ladies and gentlemen:

The Lament of Neil Heywood: Well, since Gu Kailai left me, I’ve found a new place to dwell. It’s down at the end of Lonely Street at Lucky Holiday Hotel.

Now, links.

Your lead Bo Xilai story is about Wang Lijun and US involvement. “According to the officials’ version, the American diplomats who oversaw his brief, bizarre stay pre-empted any formal application for asylum because of the difficulties of spiriting him out of the country and questions about his eligibility. Instead, they said, the State Department shielded him from almost certain arrest by police officers loyal to Mr. Bo and ensured he could make his accusations in Beijing.” [NY Times]

Bo is almost certainly under shuanggui. “Translated below, a recent post by Chinese blogger Chu Zhaoxian (储昭贤) reveals a lesser-known, and arguably equally ruthless, tactic primarily used for dealing with Party members accused of corruption: shuanggui (双规). People facing shuanggui, which can be translated as “dual designation” and refers to a designated time and place of inquiry, are usually apprehended at their places of work or summoned for ‘voluntary visits’ with investigators…. // Shuanggui usually lasts several months and can extend to more than one year. Some shuanggui cases, particularly high-profile ones, are converted into criminal cases and adjudicated through the formal judicial process. The typical sentence is death or life imprisonment, with all property confiscated and official positions revoked. The following table summarizes some recent cases.” [Dui Hua Human Rights Journal] (H/T RFH)

The first quote’s from Bo Xilai; the second Bo refers to his son, Guagua: “’A few people have been pouring filth on Chongqing and me and my family,’ he told reporters. ‘They even say my son studies abroad and drives a red Ferrari.’ // But Mr. Bo does study abroad, and American officials say he arrived in a red Ferrari last year to pick up the American ambassador to China’s daughter for a date.” [NY Times]

Bo Xilai’s effect on the Party. “In the view of some analysts and party insiders, that same scandal has raised the notion of high-level misconduct among China’s elite to a level that some say could have far-reaching and unpleasant implications for stability. It could cast a long shadow over one of the party’s linchpins: the notion that a handful of all-powerful officials and retired elders are better qualified to pick their successors than are ordinary citizens.” [NY Times]

Hell of a headline: “Dead Brits in China: a historical perspective.” [Beyond Brics, Financial Times]

For the record, cultivating personal popularity for political gain is awful, and I wish people would start talking about that as one of democracy’s shortcomings. “Others saw him as pioneering a western-style of politics that sought to cultivate personal popularity, rather than loyalty to the party.” [The World, Financial Times]

Reuters is sinking deeper and deeper into the well with its anonymous sources. And they love telling you their stories are “exclusive.” This article happens to have “exclusive” AND “sources” in the headline. [Reuters]

New to the Bo beat, as far as I can tell: “Troubles within the CCP leadership do not indicate that China as a whole is weak. Among the profound differences between the Tiananmen incident in 1989 and the Bo crisis is that in the latter case, at least so far, China’s economy and society have been hardly disrupted. This reflects the maturity of Chinese society and the country’s strength.” [Brookings]

The story’s interesting enough, but look at the byline: By Bo Gu. We should add an addendum to our Bo rumors post. [MSNBC]

Your nostalgic good-times-in-Beijing interlude:

Finally…

Bo Guagua would’ve been a “catch” for college admissions officials. Duh? [Reuters]

By RFH

With all the stuff going around about Bo, Bogu, Guagua, Gu and, of course, Neil and Nick Heywood, it’s getting hard for even the most Burroughs of media junkies to keep up. Every time I tell myself I’m done with it, Malcolm Moore at the Telegraph or Jeremy Page of Wall Street Journal turn up offering another fix of the good stuff. Alright, Malcolm – but dammit, this is the last time! I can’t take any more of these tantalising text messages or spooky secrets; if it carries on like this, I might have to start reading Aunt Agatha’s coverage at the New York Times.

Bent as they are on spreading foul tumors – how the Chinese organs refer to rumours and what the rest of us now call the probable truth – the devils in Western media are actually ignoring a whole bunch of good stuff. But we’re not. Here’s a roundup of the most cancerous:

1) Bo Xilai was a pimp who shared his women with Party pals, including Zhou Yongkang, head of the Central Political and Legislative Committee. What makes Bo a “pimp” and not just man’s best friend, i.e. that invaluable wingman, is unclear. Maybe because Bo and Zhou are both married? MSNBC, CNN, WSJ, et al. have been trying to paint Bo and his wife Gu as the “John and Jackie Kennedy” of China. Like most awkward China analogies (“She’s China’s Britney Spears! Only without the meltdowns, and all that other stuff you associate with Britney”) the Camelot comparison fails on several dozen different levels – Jackie? Really? – but Bo certainly matches Jack on the sex and corruption front.

As an addendum: when it comes to the ladies, the CCP loves to share. The classic story is that of the once-finance minister Jin Renqing, ex-agriculture minister Du Qinglin and former head of Sinpoec Chen Tonghai, who, in the 1990s, all shared bragging rights to one mistress, a mysterious socialite socialist who loved to Party. It later emerged she was a Taiwanese spy. Awkward! Some might find this “sharing” culture a tad homoerotic. Not me, though. To the rest of us (still-living) Old Harrovians, it’s just as manly and normal as oiling up for a nude wrestle with a muscular chum.

"Give me your your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle." Photo by Feng Li / GETTY IMAGES

2) Bo Xilai is a serial killer. Boxun will try to tell you that Bo and Gu are responsible for at least 16 murders between them. They also say that Bo slept with more than 100 women (is that all?), including several celebrities, pop singers and, er, CCTV presenters – though not James Chau, we can safely presume. This isn’t new. Whenever we hear of a high-ranking politician being a sack man, it’s always the same: Jiang Zemin, the “flower vase” who was supposed to just sit and look pretty for a few years and went on to rule for a decade, was a total playa: not content with his wife and the mistress everyone knows, famous soprano Song Zuying, Jiang also paid regular calls on Li Ruiying, Chen Zhili, Huang Liman and, supposedly, a Soviet spy called “Klava” (source: Epoch Times. Cough). Amazingly, even the Hu has apparently had sexual thoughts. Courtesy of Wikileaks, we learned the President had robo-sex with a Chinese television anchorwoman in her 20s while he was still vice president. The 1999 cable stated that the hook-up had “scandalised” President Jiang Zemin – because Jiang had dibs on her? Apparently it was more of an ethical ding-dong: the woman was “younger than Hu’s own daughter.” Still, Jay-Z would have been put into an early grave had he ever read the skinny on the founding father of the PRC. Debauched tyrant (and occasional rapper?) Mao ‘Z’ Dong – who preferred to round up extremely young and unknown “singing girls” from the provinces for his doddering pleasure – was riddled with STDs. When Mao’s doctor told him he should pay more attention to his, you know, genital hygiene, the lightning-fast Mao sweetly fired back: “I wash my penis every day – in their pussies!” (H/T: JP).

3) Neil had socialist leanings too, sex-wise. While some say the neglected Gu found solace in the arms of a charming and enigmatic Brit (“The name’s Heywood… Neil Heywood”), it was only a matter of time before someone saw things like a “butler,” Harrow public school for boys, a paternalistic English expat and the chubby-cheeked Bo Guagua and thought: ah-ha! We won’t bother to outline this hokum other than to say if it is true, we want the Telegraph to run it on page one and the Guardian to publish several cogent think-pieces about homophobia in the media.

4) “Bogu Kailai.” The unusual naming, in official statements, of Bo’s wife as “Bogu” was as perplexing to China Watchers as “Bennifer” was to those of us who didn’t give a damn about celebrity Hollywood couples. Although the Mandarin characters are different, Bo Gu is a largely forgotten CCP darling who died in 1946 of complications arising from a plane crash. Other famous folk to have died in aviation disasters include Buddy Holly, Lynyrd Skynyrd and, er, Lin Biao. Lin is notorious for supposedly attempting to pull a coup on Mao, failing, catching a plane in Beidaihe (where his museum-home can be still be visited as an official shrine to corruption) and then screwing up even further by flaming out somewhere over Mongolia. Was he defecting to Mother Russia? Was the plane shot down? No one, except the curator of the Party archives, really knows – hell, the Party covered up the death of one of their top men for a full year while they tried to figure out why anyone would want to harm Mao. Anyway, the theory goes Bo Gu + Lin Biao = Bo Xilai was also guilty of high treason and conspiracy. A stretch? Thank People’s Daily, bringing you odd hints, coded analogies and vague allusions since 1998. (H/T to the fine blog run by @jkbloodtreasure and JP; for full coup coverage, check out the exhaustive work of the always-entertaining Asia Times.)

5) Neil Heywood died of natural causes! Most stunning of all to the foreign press corps would undoubtedly be the revelation that the Heywood case is a vast Trojan Horse, containing little more than a pile of ashes in an urn. Although there’s a good deal of weirdness about the Heywood fatality – “strange” requests at the memorial service not to approach the grieving widow, an apparently histrionic encounter between Gu and the widow Heywood in a Chonqing eatery, surrounded by security guards and replete with “sobbing” – it’s possible that CCP officials looked at the case of Heywood, a situation with near-zero physical evidence but a whole lot of circumstantial material – and thought – “Let’s run with this.” Granted, uncomfortable questions are piling up for both the UK and PRC governments like Mafia informers in a Sicilian river, but I reckon after the eighteenth cry for Party unity, things should die out by, say, October – no pun intended, really.

RFH can be reached at rfh@beijingcream.com.

UPDATE, 2:12 pm: Ed’s note: Want China Times really wants to get in on this mix as well. Its latest: “A piece published in Mingjing News, a New York-based website allegedly sourced by political insiders, has suggested that Zhang Weijie, a former anchorwoman for Dalian TV, gave birth to a daughter of whom Bo Xilai is the father. // She later accepted 10 million yuan (US$1.6 million) in hush money from Dalian Shide Group chairman Xu Ming and now lives incognito, moving from place to place and raising her daughter alone, the article said.”

BJC’S COVERAGE OF BO XILAI (rollover for story description, click to open in new window): 

Jackie Chan, Lale Can and Bo Guagua, via The Telegraph (link below)

Here are the more interesting bits in a day of frenetic media coverage of the Bos.

THE SON

“Very beautiful” apparently just means “has big baps.” “Mr Bo has been romantically linked to Chen Xiaodan, the daughter of the governor of the China Development Bank and the granddaughter of Chen Yun, one of the Communist party’s eight elders. But at Oxford he dated Lale Can, a Turkish student who now works for KBW investment bank. Together they organised a ball at which the DJ Tim Westwood performed, and Mr Bo also arranged a lecture by Jackie Chan, the Chinese actor. // ‘She was quiet and nice, and of course, very beautiful. He seemed quite smitten with her,’ said a friend.” [The Telegraph]

[@Stinson]

Meanwhile, @NotoriousBGG hasn’t updated since March 29.

[@BeijingCream]

THE WIFE

Hypocritical, some? Jiang Weiping (姜维平), a journalist who was jailed for investigating Bo’s corruption, told Voice of America that Gu Kailai, Bo Xilai’s wife, has Hong Kong ID and Singapore greencard. // ‘She does not only have Hong Kong ID, but also a Singapore green card. I am sure, because she has transferred her assets to Hong Kong and sent her child to Singapore for education, where he learnt English. Gu Kailai approximately spent three to five years travelling around the world, mainly to Singapore and the UK,’ Jiang Weiping said in the interview.” [Shanghaiist]

“So…  you have the ‘politician’ who has his citizens out signing red songs and fighting corruption, while the rest of the family that has clearly set up the exit plan.” [All Roads Lead to China]

Struggling will only make it worse. “Analysts say that by moving decisively to bury Ms. Gu and her husband, party leaders are trying to send a message to allies of Mr. Bo who are still putting up resistance. ‘This is why the dog who has fallen into the water is still being beaten,’ said Steven Tsang, director of China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham in England.” [NY Times]

Neurotic, you say? “Ms. Gu had always been emotionally volatile, but she grew increasingly neurotic after she was subjected to a corruption investigation around 2007, Mr. Heywood told friends. People close to her said she suffered from depression in recent years. // At one point in about 2010, she asked members of her inner circle to divorce their wives and swear an oath of loyalty, according to one friend. Mr. Heywood refused, which angered her for a while, this person said.” [Jeremy Page, Wall Street Journal]

NEIL HEYWOOD

Is this Reuters pic really the only one of the man on the Internet?

Yikes. “After he flew to Chongqing, he tried to telephone his usual contacts but couldn’t get through to any of them, according to the friend. He was left waiting alone in his hotel room for instructions. // Mr. Heywood felt he had reason to be nervous, although he had taken steps to protect himself. He had told the same friend earlier that he had left documents detailing the overseas investments of Mr. Bo’s family with his lawyer in Britain as an ‘insurance policy’ in case anything happened to him. // He had also told friends that he was concerned about his safety after falling out with Mr. Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, who he said knew about the documents and was convinced she had been betrayed by someone in the family’s ‘inner circle’ of friends and advisers.” [Jeremy Page again, WSJ, same link as above]

Heywood’s link to the family: Bo Guagua. “A maverick since his school days in England, Mr. Heywood appears to have met the Bo family in the northeastern city of Dalian, where he moved from Britain in the early 1990s and by some accounts taught English. He told one British journalist, Tom Reed, that he sent out a flurry of introductory letters to Chinese officials seeking a connection to the elite, and that Mr. Bo, then Dalian’s mayor, responded.

“Mr. Bo and Ms. Gu, a charismatic and ambitious couple with a pedigree of influence from Mr. Bo’s ties to Mao Zedong, appear to have been looking for the same thing that many wealthy Chinese families are seeking — a path to a Western education for their child. Ms. Gu said in 2009 that she and Mr. Bo had picked the Harrow School for their son, but he initially failed to gain admittance. Mr. Heywood, a Harrow graduate, later told friends that he served as a ‘mentor’ to the young man, Bo Guagua. Some who knew Mr. Heywood said he helped arrange Bo Guagua’s schooling in Britain….

“In conversations about Mr. Heywood, friends depicted him as charming but elusive, and in some ways a contradictory character. He was, they said, outspoken in his pride in Britain, its imperial history, its monarchy and its culture, and he was contemptuous of socialism.

“But he was a wanderer, too, and seemed drawn to the breezy, every-man-for-himself culture he found in the United States. After graduating from Harrow, he spent a year driving cross-country in a camper he named ‘the mule.’” [NY Times]

WANG LULU

This would be Neil Heywood’s wife. “Outside her home, Mr Heywood’s Chinese wife said she was ‘sorry’ she could not speak about the death, but she was too ‘sad’. // But a close friend, who did not want to be named, told the BBC: ‘She’s really suffering at the moment so please understand her – she’s just lost her husband.’ // He added: ‘It’s not easy for her because she has to bring up her children.’ // She has a son and daughter, who attend an international school in Beijing.” [BBC]

ZHANG XIAOJUN, BO FAMILY AIDE

He worked in the Bo home, but no one else knows anything about him. Accused along with Gu Kailai of homicide. Prisoner’s dilemma?

BJC coverage of what Bo knows (rollover for story description, click to open in new window): 

By RFH

When Hu Yaobang, the reformist Party General Secretary whose death two year laters would spark the Tiananmen demonstrations, was purged for the second time in 1987, it was Bo Yibo who drew up the official charges. The only Politburo member who backed Hu was Xi Zhongshun, a member of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.

That Yibo’s son, Bo Xilai, would later feud with Zhongshun’s son (and future president of China) Xi Jinping should come as no surprise; Chinese politics is a long game. But how in the world did British national Neil Heywood, an Old Harrovian with dodgy business cards, insert himself into all this? How did we get here – the drafting stage of a John Le Carre novel in which British authorities are investigating a death that happened last November in a Chongqing hotel room?

Let’s piece together this ongoing story:

We’re told Bo Xilai hired Heywood to “help” his son, Guagua, get into Harrow (though, if memory serves, the entrance exam for Harrow is very simple; they ask you if you have 40,000 GBP a year, and if you get the answer right, you’re in). Heywood, among other things, was a seller for Aston Martin, yet no one knows who he is in Chonqing’s business community. Chinese bloggers initially seemed to assume he was Bo’s family butler – it’s great to see how Britain has moved on.

Heywood worked for Hakluyt, a corporate intelligence firm founded by former MI6 officers (so kind of like the Feather Men, then?) supposedly as what the Chinese poetically call a “white glove,” but we – you and me, guv – would call, more prosaically, a bagman. There’s nothing surprising about this. The British economy is run on agents, consultants, go-betweens, middle men and people who generally have nothing to offer except inserting themselves between mutually beneficial parties and making off with a fixer’s fee. The question here is, why are the likes of Bo running with this (apparently) small fry?

And then Heywood turns up dead in a hotel room, supposedly of alcohol poisoning. Despite his Harrow background, strange antics, supposed links to one of China’s top politicians and the British embassy, and mysterious cause of death, there were no reports in the press here or abroad of Heywood’s death – not even in Harrow’s official paper of record, the Daily Telegraph. Why? (Ed’s note, 12:30 am: according to Telegraph reporter Malcolm Moore, the paper ran a paid death notice on November 14.)

Furthermore, his family doesn’t seem to be bothered about his sudden demise. Cremation is the norm in China, but normally when a UK resident dies abroad, his body is repatriated with the assistance of the British consul, at the cost of the family. We’re told he had a Chinese wife – who, exactly? Did she authorize the cremation? What about the folks back home? (Rumor has it, just now via @malcolmmoore, that Heywood’s wife, who returned to the UK for the memorial ceremony, is currently in Beijing trying to get the hell back out, but the UK embassy is being just as helpful as they were immediately after Heywood shuffled off the coil).

And why is the British establishment only now taking an interest? We’re told Heywood was a teetotaler – if so, that would make him the first British one in China – but then, what do we make of his cause of death? The British Embassy was informed he overdosed on alcohol, yet his family was told he died of a heart attack. Which is it?

I’m starting to think this Chongqing stew might be all about Bo Guagua, who’s becoming an embarrassment to the Party. Correction: I’m starting to think certain folks in the upper echelons of power want certain other people to think that. The Heywood link is prime fodder – Harrow, Oxford, James Bond, corruption, murder… all we need is sex; an affair between Heywood and Gu Kailai would seal the deal. It focuses more attention on the Bos, particularly those lighting rods of corruption, excess and entitlement, which stewards like Hu and Wen can’t tolerate (two of only three Politburo members not to have bestowed Bo’s Chongqing with their benison).

Before Bo was dismissed, his last public appearance was mostly spent dismissing rumors about his son driving Ferraris, claiming that Guagua’s wildly extravagant education (not to mention his lifestyle) was funded by “full scholarships.” Five days later, Bo was toast.

Around the time of Heywood’s untimely passing and extremely timely cremation, Guagua’s profligate behavior was starting to disconcert just about everybody who had seen the photos. Despite Bopère claiming his son had scholarships for every school, everybody knows Guagua isn’t the brightest, supposedly flunking his entrance exams and eventually rusticated from Oxford for poor academic performance. A student magazine article winked that he was “terminally spending” and had a “strained relationship with books.”

The Metropolitan Police should be heading up to Harrow-on-the-Hill armed with two questions: what was Neil Heywood’s connection, if any, to Bo Guagua’s introduction to the school? And was his education funded by any scholarship – and if so, in God’s name why? It’s a murder inquiry, so they should have the credentials required.

We can now safely assume that Wang Lijun went to the US Embassy in Chengdu in part because of information on Heywood. That brings in a host of other players to this saga: the CIA? Sure. CCP moles? Why not. The story of the Chinese businessman and the foreign consultant making merry in business together until the Chinese side suddenly decides they have what they want and gives the foreigner the old heave-ho is as old as the Opium Wars – and Beijingers have certainly seen more than one case of that in the expat community (though Chad Lager and Olaf “Kro” Bauer are both, as we write, still alive).

But is that the reason Heywood lost his life? Because he was no longer useful, or because he knew too much?

Sound too fanciful? We’re just following the narrative arc.

Bo Guagua, via China Digital Times (link below on his name)

I first learned of Sunday’s Ferrari crash in Beijing two nights ago and didn’t think much of it until The Atlantic’s James Fallows wrote about the incident earlier today. My only question had been: Who drives fast enough on a completely deserted ring road at 4 am and crashes? The answer: probably someone very rich and very out of it. So… Bo Guagua?

There are quite a lot of these very rich head cases in central Beijing, and they’re prone to meltdowns and public blow-outs. But Chinese police regularly refuse to comment on their “ongoing cases,” just as they’re not likely to comment on incidents where formalities have yet to be resolved. Unfortunately, this creates a fertile ground for rumors to proliferate.

The old joke about how it seems to be a “sensitive time” almost all the time in China has never seemed truer. With Bo Xilai under arrest, powerful military interests are swirling, people say. Take as an example the 14th army, a military unit set up by Bo’s father, Bo Yibo, headquartered around the sensitive border area in Yunnan and Tibet. Bo Jr. was visiting this unit in February when a reasonable man might have expected him to be in Beijing or Chengdu, preparing to combat Wang Lijun’s allegations against him. Could Bo have been drafting contingency plans?

Too far, you say? Not for Epoch Times, which ran a “breaking news” piece earlier today based entirely on vague rumors from Chinese microbloggers. Apparently a military coup was staged last night in Beijing, with Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao on one side against Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang. Tanks vs. Ferraris.

But I prefer dealing with reality — the interesting reality of state media, for example. Sunday’s crash reminds me of a story by Global Times in July 2010 about an issue of GQ China featuring a withering and in-depth rebuke of princelings – wealthy young brats – who drive fast cars, have studied abroad and generally appear vapid, reckless and completely out of touch with the real world. The GQ reporter interviewed members of some hideous enclave called the Super Car Club and allegedly used quotes meant to stay off the record.

The July issue was “voluntarily” yanked, and one of GT’s then-reporters, Li Shuang, wrote a front-page Metro Beijing story about the sorry tale. The following day, all hell broke loose – again – as the owner of SSC called various editors at the GT office to demand an apology, while threatening all manner of extrajudicial repercussions. Although the editors and reporter stood by the article, it was later removed from the website, though the newspaper itself was not recalled.

Li and the Global Times actually broke the story, but due to the newspaper’s arse-backward policies, they didn’t really get the credit they deserved. The point is: papers like GT often get away with reporting on controversial topics because they are slightly off-center of the propaganda department’s radar and because they are also entirely not staffed with mindless drones (though there are certainly a few of those). GT comprises young, inquisitive reporters and  (some) managers with a largely Western sensibility toward reporting what they can, within a straitjacket they neither appreciate nor fully anticipate.

And like it as not, when redoubtable reporters like James Fallows write about Global Times in rather excitable terms – “It is hard to believe that the story will stay up very long,” he writes, though it’s been nearly 17 hours and the story is still up – they can (semi-)unwittingly condemn both the story and any real progress. It’s a bind: Chinese-based journalists cannot ignore these kinds of stories and commentaries, but by spotlighting them, they doom state media outlets (and their earnest ambassadors) to a continued grim hidebound existence that makes such Weibo-led “scoops” as a car crash both unusual and newsworthy. One can’t ignore the fact that it’s a situation that suits the Western press quite nicely – far less so for the ignoble Chinese reporter who ends up paying the price.