On August 11, Ann Heywood, the mother of murdered British businessman Neil Heywood, issued a statement that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. (“The full text of a statement,” according to WSJ.) “Given the circumstances of Neil’s murder, I have been surprised and disappointed that, despite repeated discreet approaches to the Chinese authorities, there has been no substantive or practical response,” she wrote. (It was then reported that the family was asking for $5 million in compensation.)

The Heywood family lawyer, He Zhengsheng, is now saying that Ann’s statement “was not released by the family of Neil Heywood,” as he told SCMP in a phone interview. Something’s gotta be lost in translation there, right? He did not say who released the statement, if not Ann. Did someone hack her email account and email WSJ? Are people using fax machines? How did this happen? What’s going on?

WSJ’s official response to He was more or less “fuck off.” Or as SCMP puts it:

Ali Bullock, a spokesman for The Wall Street Journal, said: “The Journal accurately reported the content of a statement released by Ann Heywood.”

SCMP also reports that “a source with knowledge of the Heywood family said Ann and Wang Lulu, Heywood’s Chinese widow, had different opinions on how to handle the compensation process.”

Also, this:

A friend of the Bo clan said the family “would do something” if the verdict was harsher than they expected.

He would pout. That’s what he’d do. Then eat a big steamed bun without sugar.

The trial starts Thursday. Let’s get it over with.

Heywood lawyer adds new twist ahead of Bo Xilai trial (SCMP)

With each day that we still wait for the trial of Bo Xilai to begin, it becomes a little easier to forget what this is all about. Politics, economics, how it affects Xi Jinping’s reforms, and shuanggui, yes, all very interesting, but at the heart of the matter is a murder — the poisoning of British businessman Neil Heywood — and a high-level cover-up that has already resulted in two people — former Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun and Bo Xilai consort Gu Kailai — being given (essentially) 15-year sentences.

Just today, Ann Heywood, the mother of Neil Heywood, has issued a statement to remind everyone of this little inconvenient fact: that Chinese politics is important and all — “not wanting to cause unnecessary embarrassment to the Chinese authorities,” she wrote about refusing all media requests until now — but you know what else would be nice? Justice.

The full statement is below, but it’s the final paragraph that matters:

It is now more than 1½ years since my only son Neil died suddenly in Chongqing, China, at the age of 41. Until now, I have refused all requests from the media to comment on Neil’s death, not wanting to cause unnecessary embarrassment to the Chinese authorities. However, circumstances now compel me to break my silence.

In the months following Neil’s death, it gradually became clear, from media reports and from official Chinese statements, that Neil did not die from natural causes but was murdered. It also became clear that prominent Chinese officials, including a member of the Communist Party’s politburo and a number of senior policemen, were connected with the murder and involved in a systematic coverup.

While struggling to come to terms with my own grief, my overriding concern has been for the security and well-being of Neil’s two children. Now aged just 8 and 12, they are particularly vulnerable to the hurt and horror of their father’s murder and, since Neil was the family’s sole breadwinner, to uncertainty and insecurity, there being no financial provision for their future.

Given the circumstances of Neil’s murder, I have been surprised and disappointed that, despite repeated discreet approaches to the Chinese authorities, there has been no substantive or practical response. I hope and trust that the leaders of this great nation, which Neil loved and respected, will now show decisiveness and compassion, so as to mitigate the consequences of a terrible crime and to enable my family finally to achieve some kind of closure to our ongoing nightmare.

Essentially, a “let’s get it on already.” It’s as if high-level negotiations of Bo’s fate — after all this time — continue behind closed doors, with powerful opinions split on how to move forward, leaving the rest of us in lingo. “Senior Communist Party officials worry that Bo’s core constituency – conservative leftists as well as the economically dispossessed – will be inflamed by a harsh verdict: the death penalty or even life in prison,” reports Reuters. It continues:

The risk is that Bo’s supporters could remain a brake on the reforms that favor private businesses and greater reliance on market forces.

“Bo Xilai still has many supporters and sympathizers in the party, the government and the military,” said a party source, requesting anonymity due to the political sensitivity of the case.

…”It will be difficult to please both factions regardless of how heavy or light the sentence is,” the source with ties to the leadership said.

In a sign of just how deep the ideological rift runs, a recent commentary in state news agency Xinhua’s online edition called for officials and party members to close ranks.

The commentary, published the day Bo was indicted last month, urged officials to “resolutely uphold the central (government’s) decision, not to be afraid, shrink back or hesitate once the order (verdict) is out the door.”

So what do we tell Mrs. Heywood? Sorry? Alas, the murder of Neil Heywood long ago stopped being about him.

UPDATE, 8/13, 10:33 am: Hmm:

The family of a British businessman whose 2011 murder led to the downfall of Communist Party highflier Bo Xilai is seeking compensation of at least 30 million yuan (about $5 million) for his death, according to people familiar with discussions on the matter.

The Sunday Times, in its now-famous (or infamous) piece on Neil Heywood (still paywalled, but it’s here if you want to purchase), alluded to a certain Channel 4 documentary on the man. Quote: “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.”

Whether you believe that or not, Dispatches’s 47-minute documentary on Neil Heywood is now available for viewing, in full, on YouTube. The embedding has been disabled, but we’ve uploaded a preview above. (UPDATE, 12:22 pm: It appears that you can only watch the full show if you’re within the UK, so for those on VPNs, set your portal to an English location; we’ve uploaded the preview to Youku, and it’s embedded after the jump — let’s see how long it stays up. Also: here’s Channel 4′s presser on this episode. UPDATE 2, 12:42 pm: It’s all viewable, anywhere! Big hat tip to Josh Chin, who points us to True Vision, which has the full documentary in three parts.)

You’ll have to excuse the poor audio — it’s much crisper on the full-length movie — but you get the basic gist of this documentary’s great awfulness / awful greatness: November two-thousand and eleven: a British businessman is muhhhduhd in a hotel in China.

Channel 4′s top-secret inside source who knows both Gu Kailai and Neil Heywood seems to be Gu’s friend. She certainly has no ulterior motives, we’re sure. Quote: “There are political enemies out there. It is extremely risky to contradict the existing narrative. I find it impossible to believe she would murder him.”

Shadowy agents. Dramatized bedroom scenes. Existing narratives. Zoom in on newspaper headline word SPY. Did we mention shadows? Lots of those. MUHHHHHHHDUH.

Yes, Channel 4. You win.

(H/T RFH)

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:

Neil Heywood was likely feeding information to British intelligence officers while in the inner circle of Bo Xilai, according to Jeremy Page of the Wall Street Journal.

From the very beginning of this saga, we’ve known that Heywood — poisoned by Gu Kailai, as the consensus goes — has been connected to MI6, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, but never have we had proof. Certainly nothing like this:

The Journal investigation, based on interviews with current and former British officials and close friends of the murdered Briton, found that a person Mr. Heywood met in 2009 later acknowledged being an MI6 officer to him. Mr. Heywood subsequently met that person regularly in China and continued to provide information on Mr. Bo’s private affairs.

Continuing:

William Hague, the British foreign secretary who oversees MI6, broke with standard policy of not commenting on intelligence matters and issued a statement in April saying Mr. Heywood, who was 41 when he died, was “not an employee of the British government in any capacity.”

That was technically true, according to people familiar with the matter. They said Mr. Heywood wasn’t an MI6 officer, wasn’t paid and was “never in receipt of tasking”—meaning he never was given a specific mission to carry out or asked to seek a particular piece of information.

But he was a willful and knowing informant, and his MI6 contact once described him as “useful” to a former colleague. “A little goes a long way,” the former colleague recalls the contact saying in relation to intelligence reports based on Mr. Heywood’s information.

If true, the most pressing questions become: 1) How did Heywood clear security checks and gain the trust of one of the dozen or so highest-ranking people in China? Security breach, yes? 2) Was Heywood murdered because he was doing spy work? Could he have possessed unimaginably damning information against the Bo’s?

Britain’s top newspapers have jumped on this story. They don’t add much to WSJ’s report, but here’s the Telegraph, Guardian and BBC. Surely these good folks will be eschewing US presidential election coverage to find out more about the murdered Briton who reportedly drove around in a silver Jaguar with “007″ license plates. We can only hope.

In the most non-suspenseful verdict ever, a court in Hefei, Anhui province (read: the Party) has officially sentenced Gu Kailai to “death with a two-year reprieve” for murdering Neil Heywood, as expected. What this means is that Gu will not be put to death, assuming she doesn’t commit another crime in the next two years. And then it’s off to a plush retirement home — sorry, prison – and no one will remember any of this.

With all due respect to Heywood’s family and associates, if you’re related to a high-level Chinese official here and want to kill someone, make sure the would-be victim is insignificant, has few connections with other Chinese bosses, and, oh yeah, it helps if you have friends within the CCP. Gu Kailai obviously does. She’ll be just fine — though we hear cancer is less forgiving than the Party.

Reuters:

“We respect the court’s decision,” said He Zhengsheng, a lawyer for the Heywood family. He and another witness to the hearing – which was barred to all but a few journalists from official Chinese media – revealed the verdict to throngs of reporters waiting outside the court in eastern Hefei city.

They both also said Zhang Xiaojun, an aide to the Bo household, was sentenced to nine years in prison for acting as an accomplice to the poisoning of Heywood.

As for what this means for Bo Xilai, that is the real mystery. Will he face criminal charges? Could he possibly? We’re about to find out whether he has stronger friends or enemies. Stay tuned.

UPDATE, 12:04 pm: Here’s Donald C. Clarke again with an explanation for why Gu could serve as few as 15 years:

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.]

Donald C. Clarke, professor of law at George Washington University, recently translated an account of the Gu Kailai trial and posted it on his website, Chinese Law Prof Blog. The account was written in Chinese by Zhao Xiangcha, titled, “A Record of my Observation of the Murder Trial of BoGu Kailai and Zhang Xiaojun.” Zhao notes that he wasn’t allowed to bring in any recording equipment — he even had a small pencil confiscated at the door — so all his observations (and there are plenty) are from memory.

The lack of a recording device may have been blessing in disguise, because we end up getting a concise summary of the events preceding Neil Heywood’s murder, including Gu’s fear that he had kidnapped her son, Bo Guagua. He also observes that, “BoGu Kailai was relatively calm all the way through, but was unable to hide her intense anxiety. I could clearly see her hands trembling. She said nothing in her own defense, leaving it all to her attorney(s). Her voice was soft and she spoke standard Mandarin.”

Those behind the Great Firewall can read Clarke’s translation here. Some highlights:

Heywood thereupon sent an email to Bo Guagua demanding 10% of his expected profit, i.e., 14 million pounds. Bo Guagua conceded that his family should bear partial responsibility, but there was a great deal of disagreement over the specific amount. After a number of communications back and forth that produced no result, Heywood turned to threats, and held Bo Guagua in soft detention (软禁) at his [referent unclear] home in England, using this to pressure Gu Kailai.

…

Gu first plotted with Wang Lijun. She wanted to frame him as a drug dealer. At this time Heywood was in Beijing. They would lure him to Chongqing, then use the excuse of his resisting arrest as a drug dealer to shoot him to death on the spot, thus getting rid of him.

Wang Lijun at first took part in the plot, but later on, perhaps fearing the risk, did not want to continue his participation. Gu then decided to do the job herself. On the pretext that she wanted to do an experiment, she got hold of some “Three Steps, Down” [presumably meaning the poison victim falls down dead after taking only three steps following ingestion] dog poison through some Chongqing mafia people. The seven people who supplied poison to Gu were subsequently arrested on suspicion of drug dealing.

…

Gu Kailai entered Heywood’s room by herself while the other three waited outside. She drank together with him – about 350 ml. of 80-proof (40% alcohol) whiskey. Heywood’s alcohol tolerance was low, and he got drunk and vomited (a great deal of vomit was found on the scene). He was woozy and lost the ability to resist. At this point Zhang Xiaojun came onto the scene of the crime and gave the poison to Gu Kailai. He also dragged Heywood from the bathroom to the bed. When Heywood wanted water after vomiting, Gu Kailai took the opportunity to give him the poison. She also dumped at the scene some drugs she had prepared beforehand in order to create the impression that Heywood was a drug dealer. When the two discovered the Heywood had no blood pressure (they could not be sure he was dead), they left the scene. Gu switched on the “Do Not Disturbed” indicator and told the hotel staff that Heywood was drunk and was not to be disturbed. At 11:38 p.m. that evening, the four left the scene.

…

Two days after the murder, on Nov. 15^th, the hotel staff, on finding that Heywood had not left his room for two days, [felt that] something strange was up, and discovered that he was dead. They called the police. Under the direction of Wang Lijun, the Chongqing police undertook an inspection of the crime scene and gathered evidence. They took a blood sample from the victim and did a CT scan of the corpse. Wang Lijun and several other senior police officers, in order to conceal Gu’s crime, personally carried the blood sample and other important evidence with them for a day, in violation of law and in a departure from judicial procedure. (This laid the groundwork for later doubts about the case, as recounted below.) Because of his involvement in the case, in order to escape criminal responsibility (or for some other reason), Wang Lijun later went to the American consulate.

…

She fully admitted her acts in the case without reservation; she offered no objections. She made only three clear points when she spoke: (1) She felt that the prosecution’s account of her motive was not full enough. (2) She sought to reduce Zhang Xiaojun’s culpability, and asked that he be given a lighter sentence. (3) She felt that it was improper for Wang Lijun to appear as a witness in this case and that his testimony was concocted. In her confession and recorded [statement], she repeatedly emphasized Wang Lijun’s insidiousness. As for the reason, everyone should judge for themselves.

Zhang Xiaojun had no objection to the prosecution’s evidence or charges.

In the final statements of the accused, they both admitted guilt and showed relatively sincere repentance.

And finally:

The whole courtroom was quite quiet. During the long stage of introducing evidence, some of the audience slept and was audibly snoring.

Because of course. What a great little detail — you can just picture the scene, right?

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.

Just look at her. That face. In a snap it could transform into a teeth-baring devil or a demurring tigress. Few people in the world could command attention like so — indeed, demand it by simply biting down so that her cheeks — much like her glare — lock into place. She is the type who would whisper into the ear of a gentleman 20 years her junior, through flashing teeth, I would tear you apart. And don’t think she’d blink when inserting a poison-tipped needle into your kidney before disappearing into a crowd before you’ve realized you were dying in your own bile.

Do I think she killed Neil Heywood? I don’t know, but she sure looks like she could have. Xinhua:

Bogu Kailai and Zhang Xiaojun were recently prosecuted by the Hefei Municipal Procuratorate in Anhui province on charges of intentional homicide, Xinhua learned from Authorities Thursday.

Resisting the urge to parse that phrase, which makes it sound like Xinhua employs a team of investigative journalists who need to do more than dial their friends in the Party for the latest scoop, let’s just be glad that we now know for sure. It always seemed inevitable that she would be charged of murder, but then she (and Bo Xilai) fell out of the news for a few months. As NY Times points out:

The brief report is the first official news that the case against Gu is proceeding since the announcement three months ago that she and Zhang were being investigated and that Bo was being suspended from the powerful Politburo for unspecified discipline violations. Unmentioned in the Xinhua report was any reference to Bo or a separate party investigation into him.

But back to the more pressing issue at hand. What should we call this thewy lady? This sly vamp? This perspicacious shrew? The Iron Lady has already been taken, by Margaret Thatcher. Black Widow is taken too, by some Asian American pool player. I shy away from anything involving tigers because Amy Chua has forever ruined that image for me. Maybe Yellow Golem? But people will inevitably take offense. Duchess of Chongqing? GK-47? The Empress?

Your best effort is as good as mine. Leave it in the comments section. The best answer will get a prize.

UPDATE, 7:33 pm: As Brendan O’Kane points out, Gu’s chosen English name is Horus. Wikipedia defines Horus as “one of the oldest and most significant deities in ancient Egyptian religion, who was worshipped from at least the late Predynastic period through to Greco-Roman times.”

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): 

It’s been about 15 hours since Xinhua released news of Bo Xilai’s ouster from his Party posts — released at just the time when no domestic media would be able to turn it around until the next morning, we should note (luckily, BJC keeps late hours). We’ve given the original Xinhua release another look, and two things stand out:

1. Bo Xilai is accused of “违纪” (wéijì), not “违法” (wéifǎ) — “disciplinary violations” instead of violations of law. It’s an important distinction: should he have violated the law — as his wife and aide are accused of — his case would be sent to China’s judicial system. Yes, the judiciary in China is filled with Party members, and the judges ultimately answer to the Party, but there’s a significant difference between a case handled in that arena and a case handled internally, as Bo’s is, by the Party’s own investigative committee.

2. The sixth and seventh words of Xinhua’s release are “同志” (tóngzhì) — comrade. Bo is still one of the Party’s own. Should the investigative committee turn up real dirt, however — something that links Bo to the Neil Heywood death — then it’s safe to say the “comrade” will be dropped from Bo’s name in all further communique. That’s how it is in the close-knit, closed-door, cartel-like Chinese Communist Party: you’re always on the same team until you think you’re above everyone else; then you’re no longer a comrade, but a criminal. 

Over the past month, there’s been a lot of smoke regarding Bo Xilai, some of which we’ve been happy to fan here, but when it comes to Chinese politics and media, you know there’s definitely a fire when that smoke is being blown by none other than Xinhua.

A little more than an hour ago, the official news agency of the People’s Republic of China released a terse 98-word statement that’s more damning than all the hundreds of thousands of words spent on Bo Xilai over the last month combined (H/T: RFH). Here‘s Xinhua’s first statement in full (Chinese only), essentially saying that in accordance with relevant provisions under China’s constitution, Bo Xilai’s membership to the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau and the CPC Central Committee has been suspended, and he’s under investigation. Here’s Xinhua’s second statement, in English, with this part:

According to reinvestigation results, the existing evidence indicated that [Neil] Heywood died of homicide, of which Bogu Kailai and Zhang Xiaojun, an orderly at Bo’s home, are highly suspected.

Bogu Kailai and Zhang Xiaojun have been transferred to judicial authorities on suspected crime of intentional homicide.

“Bogu Kailai” is Gu Kailai, Bo’s wife.

There you have it. In China, where political scandals are nonexistent, that this one has been allowed to exist and now — it seems — allowed to explode is proof that someone important knows something. One gets the sense that some important decision-maker decided it would be best for Xinhua to break this story lest they get scooped by a third party — heavens forbid a party outside China.

Every media outlet is on this story. In no particular order, a small sampling:

Reuters:

“Comrade Bo Xilai is suspected of being involved in serious disciplinary violations,” said the news agency said, citing a decision by the central party leadership, which decided to suspend Bo from its top ranks.

“Police set up a team to reinvestigate the case of the British national Neil Heywood who was found dead in Chongqing,” Xinhau said in a separate report, referring to the sprawling southwestern municipality where Bo was party chief until he was dismissed in March as a scandal surrounding him unfolded.

“According to the reinvestigation results, the existing evidence indicates Heywood died of homicide, of which Gu Kailai and Zhang Xiaojun, an assistant in Bo’s household, are highly suspected,” said the news agency, citing a dispute over unspecified “economic interests” between Gu and Heywood.

Washington Post:

Heywood was initially said to have died last November of an overdose of drinking in his hotel room. But Xinhua said late Monday that a police team’s “reinvestigation” of Heywood’s death found that Bo’s wife, Bo Gu Kailai, and Zhang Xiaojun, a staff member described as an “orderly” at Bo’s home, “are highly suspected.”

“According to investigation results, Bo Gu Kailai, wife of Comrade Bo Xilai, and their son were in good terms with Heywood,” Xinhua said. “However, they had conflict over economic interests, which had been intensified.”

“Bo Gu Kailai and Zhang Xiaojun have been transferred to judicial authorities on suspected crime of intentional homicide,” the Xinhua article said.

New York Times:

According to one person who said he was briefly shown a copy of information for party officials that was circulated on Tuesday, Mr. Bo was faulted for several disciplinary transgressions, including failing to oversee underlings, a reference to Mr. Wang, and mismanaging his family, a reference to the Heywood case. He was also cited for violating organizational principles for not carrying out directives from the leadership in handling the two cases.

“It said that Bo had made decisions arbitrarily, without authorization,” said this person, who also declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

He said that the document also referred to “other problems” related to Mr. Bo that were found in the process of investigating his wife in the Mr. Heywood’s death.

Sometimes, we complain — rightfully — about our political scandals involving non-essential issues like tweeted pics or affairs or what have you. This is not that kind of scandal. This one involves one of China’s princelings destined for the country’s highest ruling body making the steepest of falls. You can pull out the Icarus analogies, but are they necessary? Bo Xilai is potentially implicated in the alleged homicide of a foreign national. There. There’s your story. Go run with it.

UPDATE, 2:30 am: British Foreign Secretary William Hague takes to Twitter:

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.