The Chongqing sex scandal is getting very, very interesting. Whatever intrigue was already inherent in a scandal involving a high-ranking Party official and his mistress, raise it to the power of Wang Lijun and Bo Xilai.

Let’s start here: The femme fatale has been identified as Zhao Hongxi, who was 18 years old in February 2007 when she secretly videotaped herself having sex with Lei Zhengfu, then the party secretary of Chongqing’s Dianjiang county. Ministry of Tofu, which first broke this story on English-language media, reports via Caijing and Beijing News:

In 2007, in order to win lucrative contracts from him, who had by then been promoted to the vice party secretary of Chongqing’s Jiulongpo District, one construction company offered huge bribes to Lei. However, having netted millions of yuan, Lei was not impressed and rejected their offer.

The company soon found out about Lei’s particular interest in women. So they hired several young women, all under 20, and put them through strict training before sending them to sexually please Lei. At the same time, these young women, who approached Lei with fake identities and proffered to be his mistresses, secretly videotaped the intercourse for the company to have more leverage over Lei.

In 2009, the head of the construction company reportedly first threatened to expose Lei, and that’s how we come to the former party secretary of Chongqing, Bo Xilai, and his police chief, Wang Lijun (who you might remember from this saga):

Lei came cleaned on his ‘one-time mistake’ to Bo Xilai, then the party boss of Chongqing and a contender for one of China’s most power political posts. Soon, Wang Lijun, then Chongqing’s police chief, headed a special team to investigate the matter. As the result, Zhao Hongxia was detained for 30 days, and the boss of the company was incarcerated for a year for ‘carving an official seal without authorization from the government.’

If this scandal du jour is beginning to sound a bit too heavy — sex, politics, Bo Xilai – relax: China’s Internet is full of deft photoshoppers who bring proper perspective to it all. Because if a classic political sex scandal doesn’t devolve into this, why even bother?

More via Ministry of Tofu

The website 591hx.com has lots of pictures of Zhao Hongxi, sourced from Dongfang Net:

Also, a woman by the name of Zhou Xiaoxue has been identified as another of Lei Zhengfu’s mistresses. It’s true what they say about power and money being an aphrodisiac, in a manner of speaking.

UDPATE, 11/26, 2:20 am: Lei was set up. The video was taken by 18-year-old Zhao Hongxia, the unfortunate lady in this sex tape, in February 2007 . She was hired by the boss of a construction company whose bribes to Lei failed to win him a coveted contract. Here’s more info, including pictures of Zhao and Lei’s other mistress. Also, Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun were involved, because in Chongqing, of course they would be.

Pictured here is Lei Zhengfu, party boss of Beibei District in Chongqing. If you’re interested in seeing him without his shirt, on top of an 18-year-old girl, then wiping himself, do proceed.

Via Ministry of Tofu:

Chinese netizens, too disgusted with the official, nicknamed him ‘Edison Lei’ after Edison Chen, a Hong Kong celebrity whose public image was tainted by hundreds of explicit sex photos with multiple actresses leaked online in 2008.

Ji Xuguang, a investigative journalist who reported the six sex slaves kept in dungeon by a civil servant last year, announced on Sina Weibo that he has much more evidence, including the original sex tape, against the official. Because “the original video was too explicit”, it had to be edited before its screen captures were posted on Weibo.

Lei Zhengfu has reportedly been “relieved of responsibilities.” Too bad the following still exists. It’s NSFE — not safe for eyes.

Can whoever has it just hurry up and release the Emma Stone sex tape already? Enema for poor Ji Xuguang’s mind, it’ll be.

UPDATE, 9:17 pm: Xinhua:

A district official in southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality was sacked on Friday after he was confirmed as the man featured in a sex video exposed by microbloggers and widely circulated on the Internet.

Investigations conducted by the Chongqing Municipal Committee for Discipline Inspection have verified that Lei Zhengfu, secretary of the Beibei District Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the man featured in a sex video circulated on the Internet.

Chongqing Municipal Committee of the CPC decided on Friday to remove Lei from the post as secretary of the Beibei District Committee of the CPC and to initiate an investigation into Lei’s case.