MCLC: report confirms Wang Lijun sought asylum

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: anne hennochowicz (annemh at alumni.upenn.edu)
Subject: report confirms Wang Lijun sought asylum
***********************************************************

Source: China Digital Times (3/20/12):
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2012/03/report-confirms-wang-lijun-sought-asyl
um/

 
Report Confirms Wang Lijun Sought Asylum

A preliminary report circulated among Chinese government officials
following the dismissal of Bo Xilai
<http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2012/03/bo-xilai-replaced-as-chongqing-party-
chief/> asserts that the former Chongqing party chief had planned to
disrupt a corruption investigation into his own family
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/world/asia/bo-xilai-accused-of-interferi
ng-with-corruption-case.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all?src=tp> and purge Wang
Lijun <http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/wang-lijun/>, the former top
lieutenant who disappeared in February amid rumors of an attempted
defection 
<http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2012/02/high-profile-official-disappears-amid
-defection-rumors/>. From The New York Times:

<<A version of the report, posted on a Chinese Web site and verified
independently, provides a rare glimpse of the government¹s internal
efforts to manage one of its biggest political earthquakes in years. Some
officials are worried that the purge of Mr. Bo could upset plans for a
transfer of power to a new generation of party leaders this fall.

<<The report also states for the first time that the Chongqing police
chief who set off that earthquake ‹ Mr. Bo¹s trusted aide, Wang Lijun ‹
had sought political asylum when he fled to a United States consulate to
escape Mr. Bo¹s wrath.

<<The Communist Party Central Committee circulated the findings to ranking
party and government officials on Friday, one day after the announcement
of Mr. Bo¹s dismissal. Its contents were confirmed by a researcher at a
ministry-level institute and by a Chongqing official briefed by colleagues
who were present when the report was read at a government meeting.>>

Post-mortems continue to emerge
<http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2012/03/xi-speech-published-as-bo-fallout-con
tinues/> following last week¹s announcement that the Chinese government
had replaced Bo 
<http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2012/03/who-is-zhang-dejiang/>, ending his
push for a seat on the Politburo¹s elite Standing Committee and likely the
Politburo itself. Ian Johnson speculates in The New York Review of Books
that Bo¹s removal from the Politburo will take place at this fall¹s 18th
party congress 
<http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/mar/19/chinas-falling-star-bo-xi
lai/>, where the next generation of leaders will take the reins of the
party, and he adds that Bo¹s troubles may have begun years before
thecontroversy surrounding Wang Lijun
<http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2012/02/high-profile-official-disappears-amid
-defection-rumors/> forced Bo¹s polarizing candidacy to the forefront:

<<People often spoke of a ³Chongqing model² of greater state control and
leftist ideology. There was something to that, but Bo¹s reforms actually
included something for almost everyone. Some were progressive, such as
helping farmers, some statist, such as huge public works programs, and
others pro-business, such as courting investment. Civil libertarians were
unhappy because he trampled on the law in pursuit of organized crime but
this is par for the course in China; the past decade has seen a steady
erosion of rule of law and a rise of extra-judicial detention for
government opponents or ethnic leaders. Amid this trend, Bo¹s tactics were
hardly revolutionary.

<<Instead, it was the very fact that he was offering these measures as a
kind of systemic reform that was a rebuke to the central leadership. It¹s
a little unfair to say that Premier Wen Jiabao and party boss Hu Jintao
allowed China to stagnate during their decade in power. Since the 1990s,
China has become a major player on the world stage, boasts the world¹s
second-largest economy, successfully hosted the Olympics, and has shown
more attention to the poor by implementing rural health care, building
roads to poor areas, and providing a subsistence-level welfare.

<<But there¹s a growing sense among many Chinese that their country¹s
government needs to undertake serious reforms. In China as elsewhere
rising prosperity means rising expectations‹especially for more
transparency and openness, and less corruption
<http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/corruption/>. And all of this, of
course, has been magnified through the country¹s anarchic social media,
like microblogging. Although under government control, these sites still
pressure the government in ways that were rare in the past.

<<Bo¹s policies in Chongqing highlighted these problems too openly. Even
in his last press conference, a few days before his dismissal, he pointed
out that China¹s Gini coefficient‹a generally recognized way of measuring
economic disparity‹was terrible and getting worse. The idea of having to
deal with such a domineering person must have been abhorrent to the
incoming leadership team of Xi Jinping (himself the son of another famous
general) and Li Keqiang (a close associate of Premier Wen who is
considered a technocrat meant to run the economy). Like all new Chinese
leaders Xi and Li will be relatively weak and only acquire power with
time; Bo would have been by far the highest-profile and most media-savvy
member of the nine-man team if he had been let in.>>


While the press has largely vilified Bo in recent weeks, TIME¹s Hannah
Beech ­ who interviewed a Bo ally in the midst of his infamous ³Red
Culture² 
<http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2011/05/china-launches-red-culture-drive/>
drive last year ­ takes a more sober approach to dissecting his demise
<http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2012/03/19/the-fall-of-bo-xilai-lessons-f
rom-one-of-chinas-biggest-political-scandals/?iid=gs-main-mostpop2>:

<<But there is another lesson from the Bo affair that is less heartening.
Only one high-level Chinese politician has cultivated a public persona in
recent years ‹ and now this populist figure has been kneecapped. The man
chosen to replace Bo is another gray-faced apparatchik whose most
interesting biographical detail is the fact that he studied economics at a
North Korean university. Compare that with Bo, a self-promoter who
lavishly publicized his red-culture campaign. He also led a high-profile
crusade against local mafia that even his supporters admit netted
innocents along with gangsters. Bo held press conferences and, unlike
practically every other Chinese leader, didn¹t read out scripted answers.
He relished political theater. ³Bo Xilai
<http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/bo-xilai/> is not a good politician
for China,² says Yang Fan, an economist who co-authored a book called The
Chongqing Model and was schooled in Beijing with Bo¹s brother. ³If he was
American, he could have been successful by winning elections. But in
China, there are basically no elections, and being too high profile
doesn¹t mesh with our political culture.²

<<It¹s easy to disassociate from a disgraced politician, but Yang had been
taking Bo to task since last year, when the Chongqing boss seemed swathed
in political Kevlar. Chief among the economist¹s criticisms was the fact
that Bo¹s leadership style and political ambitions were hindering efforts
to make Chongqing a better place. Bo is an extreme embodiment of some of
modern China¹s biggest contradictions. How does a man preside over a
red-culture campaign that echoed the Cultural Revolution when his own
mother died during that turbulent period? As China¹s Commerce Minister
from 2004 to ¹07, Bo negotiated trade deals with the West and impressed
foreign envoys with his charm and colloquial English. His son, who
attended Harrow and Oxford, has been spotted racing around in a red
Ferrari. How could Bo arrive in Chongqing, China¹s fastest-growing city,
and suddenly spout iterations of Chairman Mao¹s class-busting ideology?
³Last May, I said on my blog that Bo Xilai wanted to become Mao Zedong,²
Yang told me after Bo¹s dismissal. ³But he failed because in today¹s China
there is no need for a Mao.²>>

See also a Charlie Rose discussion of Bo Xilai¹s downfall
<http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12237> with Richard McGregor of
the Financial Times and Damian Ma of the Eurasia Group last week.

March 20, 2012 1:38 AM
Posted By: Scott Greene <http://chinadigitaltimes.net/author/scott-greene/>