MCLC: behind Bo Xilai's halo

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: behind Bo Xilai's halo
***********************************************************

Source: China Beat (3/20/12): http://www.thechinabeat.org/?p=4210

Behind Bo Xilai’s Halo
March 20, 2012 in Uncategorized <http://www.thechinabeat.org/?cat=1> by
The China Beat <http://www.thechinabeat.org/?author=1>
By Xujun Eberlein

A longer version of this essay appears at Inside-Out China
<http://insideoutchina.blogspot.com/2012/03/bo-xilais-chongqing-model.html>

In the wake of Bo Xilai’s sudden downfall, shortly after what could be
called an online carnival among China watchers―probably more in
celebration of a rare, real-life political drama than anything
else―international media is changing its tune and beginning to paint a
more sympathetic image of Bo than previously reported, by focusing on
Chinese people’s love of him. Reuters, for example, has a report titled
“In China’s Chongqing, dismay over downfall of Bo Xilai”
<http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/03/16/us-china-chongqing-idUKBRE82F0H12
0120316> that quotes a working “stick man” (棒棒军, a porter-for-hire) who
praises Bo as “a good man” that “made life a lot better here.” The
Telegraph‘s Malcolm Moore (the intrepid reporter who brought Wukan to the
world’s attention) even went so far as to call Bo “one of the most loved”
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9146224/Bo-Xilai-anal
ysis-a-light-that-burned-twice-as-bright-but-half-as-long.html> officials
in China.

Those reports, however, can be misleading if not balanced by a variety of
opinions or careful analysis.

China is the most populous country in the world, and Chongqing is the most
populous metropolis in China. With that many people, one can find any and
all kinds of opinions among them, certainly including the ones quoted
above. But when we assess Chinese public opinion about a leader, a crucial
factor that should never be forgotten is the opacity of China’s politics.
Under this condition, there is only so much one can read into either love
or hatred of a leader by the masses. Mao was the most loved in the 1950s
and 60s, but it was Mao’s policies that caused tens of millions of deaths
during that period. Deng Xiaoping was one of the most hated during the
Cultural Revolution (as “China’s second biggest capitalist roader”), but
he went on to make China richer with his “reform and opening” policies. As
I wrote in a dual book review
<http://lareviewofbooks.org/post/16816935570/the-teacher-of-the-future> of
Mao’s Great Famine and Tombstone, an information blackout during the
1959-61 famine had caused millions of peasants to quietly die with no
complaints about Mao and the Communist Party. Today, the Internet has
greatly increased information accessibility (often in the form of rumors),
but that is still largely beyond people at the bottom of the society who
struggle to make a daily living, people like the “stick men.”

I have been talking to fellow townsfolk throughout Bo’s tenure in
Chongqing, both in person during my visits and via phone and email. One
thing I notice―though this is not to claim that my sample set is
statistically significant―is that the more access to information people
have, the more negative their opinions of Bo are. (The “stick man” quoted
by the Reuters report above provides collateral evidence to my
observation―he “said he could not read and did not watch television.”) Age
also mattered, with people who had experienced the Cultural Revolution
tending to be more suspicious of Bo.

Others’ attitudes toward Bo went through a change after the “crackdown on
gangsters” campaign began. I noted this in February, 2010, in a blog post
titled “Turning Winds in Chongqing’s Crackdown.”
<http://insideoutchina.blogspot.com/2010/02/turning-winds-in-chongqings-cra
ckdown.html> I am one of those who changed.

Watching my hometown from afar, my first impression of Bo Xilai was rather
good. In November 2008, Chongqing’s taxi drivers went on strike, the first
such occurrence in Communist China. I followed this event online as
closely as I could, and was worried that a bloody repression might be
inevitable. At the time, Bo had held his post as Chongqing Party chief for
less than a year. He was in Beijing when the strike started on a Monday;
meanwhile, Chongqing’s official media reported arrests of cab drivers. On
Thursday, however, after Bo returned to Chongqing, he held a three-hour
long televised meeting with representatives of the taxi drivers and
citizens to discuss their requests.  He appeared fair and open-minded,
telling the drivers that their demands were legitimate and their problems
would be attended to. He gained their trust and the strike ended
peacefully. As I wrote at the time
<http://insideoutchina.blogspot.com/2008/11/reflections-on-chongqings-taxi-
strike.html>, I was very impressed. I still remember the relief I felt for
my townsmen. I thought that Bo was different, and that he might make a
difference for Chongqing―perhaps for China, too.

A year later, when the “crackdown on gangsters” began, the taxi strike was
deemed to have been organized by “mafia.” I visit my home city often and I
knew the predicament of the cab drivers was real―so that verdict was
enough for me to be alarmed. Where had the sympathetic Bo gone? What was
the real purpose of the “crackdown”?

Today I continue to wonder what role the taxi strike played in Bo’s
decision to start a Cultural Revolution-style campaign, and what he had
really felt inside when he appeared as a sympathetic listener to the
strikers.

Initially, the crackdown made a positive impression on me as well―like the
general public, I was eager to see the corrupt punished. The irony is,
later I would be as shocked by the death sentence of Wen Qiang,
Chongqing’s police chief preceding Wang Lijun, as I was pleased by Wen’s
arrest at first.

Then came the official attempt to overturn the verdict of the taxi strike.
Then came the Li Zhuang case
<http://insideoutchina.blogspot.com/2010/02/what-are-li-zhuang-and-chongqin
g.html>. Then came a dozen death sentences and executions in quick
succession―a batch execution, really, with a concentration not seen since
the heyday of the Cultural Revolution.

An ex-judge I met last year questioned the legality of Chongqing’s
crackdown. “There is no such a term as ‘mafia’ or ‘gangsters’ in China’s
criminal law,” he told me.

* * *

Another thing I want to mention here is this: on March 8th, during the
National People’s Congress (NPC) in Beijing, Bo Xilai gave a press
conference that attracted a big crowd of journalists; lots of questions
were asked and answered, but no one brought up the disappearance of a
Chongqing delegation member, Zhang Mingyu. Zhang was taken by force from
his Beijing residence byChongqing police, believed to have been sent by Bo
Xilai. Zhang’s lawyer tried to reach out to media and netizens through
microblogs. I saw reports of Zhang’s disappearance on March 7th and
tweeted about it with a bit of shock―this was happening during the NPC,
which is supposed to be China’s highest legislative meeting. Would anybody
inquire about a violation of the basic rights of its own delegates?

A few foreign media outlets reported Zhang’s lawyer’s calls for help on
March 7th. After that, Zhang, and his name, were no longer seen anywhere,
as if he had vanished or never even existed. For a week, I searched for
his name on the Chinese internet every day. Nothing.

Until March 15th, that is, the day Bo Xilai’s removal was announced. A
friend who knew I was concerned with Zhang’s fate sent me a link to a VOC
report on Zhang’s release.

He was lucky. Another Chongqing citizen, Fang Hong, disappeared two years
ago after calling Bo Xilai “shit,” and was never seen or heard from again.

It is thinking about the helplessness of individuals like those that
brings fear to me. I write things like this essay―will I disappear one day
when visiting Chongqing? Bo’s departure has made me feel safer.
I have seen Bo Xilai characterized as a Western-style politician
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-17217516>, which I find
amusing. Bo is a product of China’s political system, pure and simple. His
education was Mao worship and he has not transcended it; his ideas are all
out of old playbooks; his suffering in his youth―years of unjust
imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution―seems to have only made him
more cynical and cruel.

China’s political system needs to be reformed in order to prevent bigger
crises. So where is the hope? If nobody coming out of the system I grew up
in could carve a new path forward, we will probably need to wait for those
who grew up after the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution had subsided.
Alas, that is a generation raised on crony-capitalism and rampant
corruption. Such is the dilemma.

Xujun Eberlein <http://www.xujuneberlein.com/> is the author of an
award-winning story collection, Apologies Forthcoming
<http://www.amazon.com/Apologies-Forthcoming-Xujun-Eberlein/dp/160489007X/r
ef=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330661494&sr=8-1>, and the blog Inside-Out China
<http://insideoutchina.blogspot.com/>.