How much do you care about Wang Lijun? Enough to read a 40-page Chinese story about him in Southern Metropolis Weekly? Short of that, check out South China Morning Post's summary of the story. Short of that, here are some excerpts. Wang paid great attention to his public image. He employed a personal PR team of more than 20 police officers. All dressed in blue uniforms, they were nicknamed the “Smurfs”. The ...

Via John Saeki Wang Lijun, who will forevermore be known as "flamboyant" in Western media, was sentenced to 15 years in prison today on four counts, "defection" probably being the gravest. That he did not get a more severe sentence is interesting, and bodes unwell for his one-time comrade Bo Xilai, with whom he will always be linked. Before we shift the attention to Bo though -- a colorful character in his ...

The "open trial" of Wang Lijun, on charges of bribe-taking and "bending the law for selfish ends," according to Xinhua, began this morning. It is now over, having taken place "under tight security before a carefully selected audience," according to the Guardian, from which the above picture is taken. "Foreign journalists were not permitted to attend." Yesterday, Wang, the former Chengdu vice mayor and polic ...

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 ...

Earlier today, Bo Xilai was ousted from his post as party secretary of Chongqing, a stunning -- if not altogether unexpected -- end to an unusually public saga that began when Wang Lijun showed up at the US embassy in Chengdu on February 6 with dirt on his former boss. At 11:43 am, a film producer with the Sina Weibo account "Billionaires" (柒月二十六) created a timeline of Bo's life and career. As of this momen ...