MCLC: Bo trial (4,5)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Bo trial (4)
*************************************************

Source: The New Yorker (8/27/13):
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/08/censorship-and-the-b
o-xilai-trial-chinas-new-direction.html

CENSORSHIP, SEX, AND THE BO XILAI TRIAL
POSTED BY JIAYANG FAN

The trial of Bo Xilai
<http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/08/the-show-trial-of-b
o-xilai.html>, the disgraced former top Chinese Communist Party official,
was not the open-and-shut case of official corruption some observers might
have expected after watching the recent slew of high-profile prosecutions
in China. Instead, by the fifth and final day of the proceedings, the
cross-examination had turned into a startlingly salacious soap opera
featuring, among other things, overlapping love triangles.

On Saturday, Bo confessed to having been unfaithful to his wife, Gu Kailai
(Party insiders have long alleged that he has had numerous liaisons),
which caused her to decamp to England in 2000, along with their adolescent
son, Bo Guagua, as an act of retribution. In England, Gu enrolled Guagua
at the prestigious Harrow School with the help of Neil Heywood, a Brit,
who became a close family friend and Gu’s financial front man. Although Gu
herself has never confirmed it, there is wide speculation that she carried
on an extramarital affair with Heywood during this period. But by the time
she poisoned Heywood in a grimy Chongqing hotel room, in 2011, Gu had
acquired a new admirer: Bo’s police chief turned Judas-esque defector,
Wang Lijun. Or so Bo testified, at least.

As media commentators both within China and abroad have noted, Bo’s
defense, from his first day on the stand until his last, proved
unexpectedly fierce, at least by comparison. Following the proceedings
against Wang and Gu last year, both of which were conducted in just one
day and behind closed doors, many (not least the state-run Chinese media)
have lauded the relative transparency of Bo’s courtroom. Although Bo has
largely denied each of the charges leveled against him, including
embezzlement, bribery, and graft, on account of his ignorance in financial
details (“The state didn’t select me for my accounting skills,” he said
during his testimony), the prosecution argued in its closing statement
that Bo had forfeited his chance at leniency with his defiance, and thus
deserves a “severe punishment.”

Whether you think the trial, which wrapped up on Monday, represents
significant strides for the Chinese justice system or stagecraft to
appease a captivated public, it has proved to be premium entertainment. By
allowing the ousted politician to have a say at all, and by releasing
portions of the daily transcript—never mind live-blogging the trial on
Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter—the Party has highlighted its
progressiveness and successfully deflected attention from the theatrical
nature of a masterfully choreographed show.

Which is not to say that there were no slipups. Among the curious
deletions in the censored transcript was Bo’s repeated mention of “orders
from superiors” in the fabrication of a medical certificate for Wang
Lijun, attesting to his psychiatric well-being in 2008. Considering Bo’s
membership status in the Politburo at the time of his arrest, the order
must have originated in the Party’s upper-most echelons in Beijing. If
such a directive existed, what does it say about the dark—and
lawless—reality of élite Party politics? If it did not, why did the
reference demand such a hasty removal?

The novel—at least for the Chinese—handling of the Bo case may signal a
new direction in the control of thorny and potentially explosive
situations in which Party leadership stands a significant risk of
implication. Instead of silencing all discussion, which has proven
patently impossible in the digital world, Beijing may aim instead to
simply curate the conversation, containing scandals to the scale of sexual
deviance and family infidelity rather than, say, Politburo profligacy.

Since the launch of Weibo, four years ago, the Chinese propaganda machine
has struggled to fortify its increasingly elaborate and complex
information firewall. Despite government efforts to enforce real-name
registration and expand the country’s army of online censors, resourceful
microbloggers have circumvented official channels in pursuit of news
typically muted by state-approved mouthpieces.

On the other hand, Bo’s trial coincides with the detainment of Charles
Xue, a well-known Chinese-American blogger and investor, in what appears
to be a politically motivated social-media crackdown. The official charge,
according to Beijing police, is solicitation of prostitution—but it has
not escaped public notice that Xue is the fifth prominent microblogger to
be arrested in three days, two of whom have reputations as liberal-minded,
muckraking journalists.

If the media makeover of Bo’s trial is indeed an order from the highest
levels in Beijing, the people who made that decision should take care not
to under-estimate the intelligence of their netizens. A microblogger by
the name of Stone Monk made an observation <http://weibo.com/jz1972> in
response to the heavy play that Xue and his alleged indiscretion have
gotten in state media that has been shared some six hundred times. “It’s
so interesting. A full circuit of Shanghai judges routinely visiting
brothels on public funds gets not a word of mention,” she mused, “but the
travails of a small-time businessman is getting around-the-clock coverage
on Central China Television! The Chinese government must truly be devoted
to the lives of its most ordinary citizens.”

Photograph by Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty

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From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: bo trial (5)


Source: NYT (8/30/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/31/world/asia/in-document-fallen-chinese-off
icial-says-he-was-obeying-orders.html

In Document, Fallen Chinese Official Says He Was Obeying Orders
By EDWARD WONG and JONATHAN ANSFIELD

BEIJING — Bo Xilai, the fallen Communist Party official, said in secret
testimony during his recent trial that he was obeying orders from a
powerful party agency in charge of security when he took steps to cover up
the flight of his police chief to an American Consulate, according to a
court observer’s written record of trial statements.

Mr. Bo, once the party chief overseeing the southwestern metropolis of
Chongqing, said the orders instructed him to say publicly that the
Chongqing police chief, Wang Lijun, had fled for health reasons, when the
true reasons were connected to the murder of a British businessman, which
only a handful of people knew about at that point.

It was perhaps the only time in the trial when Mr. Bo said senior party
officials were responsible for actions he took during the unfolding
scandal. Party leaders appear to have set strict limits on what could be
said during the trial in Jinan, which was closed to the public, and
released only vetted transcripts via an official court microblog.

Most of Mr. Bo’s testimony concerned his family life. But in the secret
testimony, he discussed orders from above to rebut the prosecutors’
accusation that he had abused his power by creating a fake medical record
to make Mr. Wang look unstable. He is also charged with embezzlement and
taking bribes.

Mr. Bo’s assertion echoed earlier interviews with party insiders, who said
powerful officials moved quickly after the consulate crisis in February
2012 in deciding whether to cover for Mr. Bo. Certain major decisions
centered on how to present Mr. Wang’s mental state to the outside world.

Mr. Bo’s argument that he was obeying orders was detailed in one of two
documents written by a court observer that were obtained Thursday by The
New York Times. It is perhaps the most explosive element to have emerged
in the courtroom because Mr. Bo was linking central party officials to the
abuse of power charge. The party has tried to isolate the murder scandal
that brought down Mr. Bo last year by keeping from the public any hint of
party leaders’ direct involvement in the events or power struggles among
themselves.

The party agency that Mr. Bo said had issued the cover-up order, the
Central Politics and Law Commission, was led for most of last year by Zhou
Yongkang, an ally of Mr. Bo who was on the Politburo Standing Committee,
which rules China. Party insiders say that Mr. Zhou was maneuvering in
early 2012 to protect Mr. Bo, his potential successor, and that he was
later weakened by Mr. Bo’s fall.

In recent weeks, people in Chinese political circles have discussed the
extent to which the party is investigating Mr. Zhou’s associates for
evidence of financial corruption.

When Mr. Wang fled to the consulate, he told diplomats he believed that
Mr. Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, had months earlier murdered Neil Heywood, the
Briton, and that Mr. Wang now feared retribution from Mr. Bo. After
leaving the consulate, Mr. Wang flew to Beijing in the custody of central
security officials.

Then two mysterious things appeared on the Internet: one was a certificate
from a Chongqing hospital that said Mr. Wang had earlier been given a
diagnosis of “severe depression”; another was a post on an official
Chongqing microblog that said Mr. Wang was undergoing “vacation-style
medical treatment.”

During the five-day trial, which ended Monday, prosecutors said Mr. Bo,
64, had abused his power by ordering the dissemination of the fake medical
certificate and telling Chongqing officials to write the microblog post.
And days before Mr. Wang’s flight, they said, Mr. Bo violated party rules
by unilaterally removing Mr. Wang as police chief. That happened after Mr.
Bo had punched or slapped Mr. Wang, whom Mr. Bo said not only confronted
him with news of the murder, but also desired his wife.

Ms. Gu was convicted of Mr. Heywood’s murder a year ago and given a
suspended death sentence, essentially life in prison. Prosecutors said she
had also suggested to Mr. Bo the idea of issuing a fake certificate.

But in his secret testimony, Mr. Bo said that he had received a “six-point
guidance” from the Central Politics and Law Commission in dealing with the
Wang case and that one point told him to “use health reasons in the name
of humanitarianism” in explaining Mr. Wang’s disappearance. The guidance
would presumably have been approved by Mr. Zhou.

Mr. Bo’s argument was laid out in one section of a document written from
memory by a court observer and including remarks that officials are
keeping secret. The first document obtained by The Times was a fuller
version of Mr. Bo’s final statement.

A person briefed on the trial confirmed that both documents had been
written by someone inside the court.

One version of the prosecution’s closing statement posted online Monday
did make an oblique reference to the “six-point guidance,” but censors
quickly excised that section. (The earlier transcript still appears on
Sina.com, a popular Web news portal.)

In interviews, party insiders said last year that Mr. Bo had tried to
persuade powerful associates in Beijing to seize on Mr. Wang’s mental
health as a way of helping Mr. Bo quash the emerging murder scandal. The
issue presented them with a test of their competing party loyalties.

After Mr. Wang was taken to Beijing, the party’s General Office, which was
run by Ling Jihua, a top aide to Hu Jintao, then the party leader and
China’s president, secretly ordered a psychiatric examination of Mr. Wang
at a military hospital in the capital. It determined that Mr. Wang
suffered from intermittent psychiatric problems, according to party
insiders briefed on the episode. Wider knowledge of that would have cast
some doubt on Mr. Wang’s murder account and other accusations.

“This exam could have been used to exonerate Bo Xilai,” one of the
insiders said.

When he learned of the exam results, the insiders said, Mr. Bo asked Gen.
Liu Yuan, a military ally who oversaw the Beijing hospital, to help leak
the results, but he refused. Mr. Ling kept the results quiet as well. If
they had chosen differently, Mr. Wang might have been discredited, and Mr.
Bo could still be in power, some of the insiders said.

A verdict for Mr. Bo, most likely predetermined by party leaders, is
expected in early September.

Mia Li contributed research.