"Death at Center of Chinese Scandal That Tarred Official
By SHARON LaFRANIERE, JOHN F. BURNS and JONATHAN ANSFIELD
Published: April 10, 2012
BEIJING ― The mysterious death of a 41-year-old British businessman in a Chongqing hotel room late last year was thrust to the center of the biggest political scandal to hit China’s Communist Party in a generation on Tuesday, as the authorities declared the death a murder and named the wife of one of China’s most powerful men the leading suspect.
Op-Ed Contributor: The Bo Xilai Sideshow (April 11, 2012)
The death of the businessman, Neil Heywood, initially attributed to alcohol poisoning, is now considered an “intentional homicide,” China’s Xinhua news agency announced. That made Mr. Heywood’s case the most sensational in a series of charges against the family of Bo Xilai, who was until March the Chongqing party chief and considered among the handful of rising leaders slated to run China.
On Tuesday, Mr. Bo was suspended from his post on the Politburo, the 25-member body that runs China, and from the larger Central Committee on suspicion of serious disciplinary infractions, the government announced. His wife, Gu Kailai, who is a lawyer, as well as a member of the Bo household staff were being investigated in the killing of Mr. Heywood.
Not since the purges after the crackdown on democracy protests in 1989 has a scandal exposed the Chinese leadership to so much turmoil. Excruciatingly for its top officials, who prize unity and secrecy above all, this one now involves foreigners in an embarrassingly intrusive way ― both the death of a British citizen and also the attempt by a senior police official to seek asylum in the United States.
That official, Wang Lijun, a onetime close aide to Mr. Bo who was himself under investigation for corruption, fled to the consulate of the United States in Chengdu in February and spent 30 hours there. He said Mr. Heywood had been poisoned and revealed what he knew about the death ― and about jockeying for power inside the country’s closed political system, several people briefed on the matter said.
Although he handed over a treasure trove of intelligence, Mr. Wang was told he could not be granted asylum. He left the consulate and was taken into custody by the Chinese authorities.
Mr. Heywood was an elusive business consultant who married a Chinese woman and carved a lucrative career in Beijing and Chongqing while keeping other British businessmen guessing about how he made much of his money, while hinting of deep links to the Bo family.
When his body was found in a hotel room on Nov. 15 in Chongqing, officials issued the “alcohol-poisoning” death certificate, although Mr. Heywood rarely drank. His relatives said that they had been told he had actually died of a heart attack, and that the body was cremated with their consent, without autopsy.
The announcement of an “intentional homicide” appeared to surprise the British government, which had seemed anxious in recent weeks to distance itself from a major Chinese political scandal, saying that suspicions about the death they had passed to the Chinese were those of other British businessmen in China, not anything they could substantiate on their own.
After an urgent huddle with other British officials, William Hague, the British foreign minister, told reporters in London: “It’s a death that needs to be investigated, on its own terms and on its own merits, without political considerations. So I hope they will go about it in that way, and I welcome the fact that there will be an investigation.”
Xinhua’s statement appeared to confirm one of the rumors that had swirled through the foreign community in China, that Mr. Heywood’s death was linked to business dealings with the Bo family that went awry. The Chinese news agency said Ms. Gu and her son, Bo Guagua, had had close relations with Mr. Heywood but later had “a conflict over economic interests.” But Xinhua did not specify how y Mr. Heywood died, or what business interests were involved. The other suspect in his death, Zhang Xiaojun, was described as an “orderly” working in Mr. Bo’s home.
The shock of the Chinese announcement ― claiming that a member of the ruling elite, Mr. Bo, was linked through his wife to a possible murder, and that the killing grew out of private business interests of the kind that have made many Chinese officials rich ― had far-reaching implications for the way that China is governed. The impact was amplified by the fact that China is facing a once-in-a-decade shift in power this fall to a new generation of leaders. Mr. Bo, 62, had become a leading contender for a seat in the inner sanctum of power, the nine-member standing committee of the Communist Party’s Politburo.
Mr. Bo, a quixotic figure, tried to build his political stature by taking a page from the political playbook of Mao Zedong, presenting himself as a populist attuned to the interests of ordinary people and stirring up nostalgia for the hugely destructive Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s, waged in the name of ordinary people against the Communist Party elite.
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Bo Xilai, front, and Wang Lijun in January.
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Op-Ed Contributor: The Bo Xilai Sideshow (April 11, 2012)
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At the same time, Mr. Bo presided over a state-led economic boom in Chongqing, the provincial-level metropolitan region in southwestern China, and, detractors said, made a fortune for himself and his family in the swamp of corruption that resulted.
As the son of one of Mao’s closest associates in the revolutionary elite, Bo Yibo, he built a following among others with revolutionary ties to Mao, as well as others unhappy with the get-rich-quick culture of recent decades ― among them, high-ranking generals and unreformed leftists in the Communist elite.
With Mr. Bo’s disgrace, the top power holders in Beijing appear to have quashed his bid for power. In doing so, officials focused on elements calculated to alienate China’s masses ― emphasizing his corrupt ways, and his reputation for brutal police crackdowns that built him a wide popular following in a country beset with surging crime.
“China is a socialist country ruled by law, and the sanctity and authority of law shall not be trampled,” Xinhua said in its announcement of his ouster on Tuesday, attributing the remarks to unnamed senior officials. “Whoever has broken the law will be handled in accordance with law and will not be tolerated, no matter who is involved.”
The murder investigation appears to be based on information provided by Mr. Wang, who as the top police official in Chongqing was one of Mr. Bo’s closest aides ― until he sought refuge at the United States Consulate in Chengdu, about 180 miles away, in early February. Mr. Wang is himself being investigated for treason for his attempt to seek protection from the United States, according to Chinese sources familiar with the case, but is being credited with having come forward with evidence in Mr. Heywood’s death.
Months before Mr. Heywood’s death, Mr. Bo and Mr. Wang had already come under the scrutiny of central disciplinary authorities over corruption and other allegations, according to these sources, and to others with ties to senior party figures. If so, the evidence that Mr. Heywood was murdered would have come as an opportune development in the inner-party struggle over the new leadership lineup.
During the more than 30 hours he spent at the American consulate, Mr. Wang told American officials that Ms. Gu had plotted to poison Mr. Heywood, and turned over a police file containing highly technical documents, according to people knowledgeable about the case. But Mr. Wang, these people said, also apparently revealed far more: an unprecedented trove of knowledge Wang on the leadership struggle, according to an individual with knowledge of the affair.
When the Americans refused him asylum, Chinese officials persuaded Mr. Wang to leave the consulate, and he was flown to Beijing, where he has been in custody since. Mr. Bo has also been under some form of residential confinement since mid-March, and his wife, too, has been detained. No one representing any of the three could be reached for comment.
A man answering the door on Tuesday evening at the London home of Mr. Heywood’s mother, Ann Margaret Heywood, said she was not available for comment. But 10 days ago, Mrs. Heywood seemed keen to downplay suggestions that her son might have been murdered. She insisted that he had suffered a heart attack, like his father at age 63. “
According to one person who said he was briefly shown a copy of confidential information for party officials that was circulated on Tuesday, Mr. Bo was faulted for 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 obstructing attempts to report the Heywood case and stripping the police powers of Mr. Wang, a step the police chief told American diplomats had ensued after he took evidence of the role of Mr. Bo’s wife in the Heywood killing to Mr. Bo.
Significantly, the party document did not suggest Mr. Bo was a murder suspect, but rather implied he could have had a role in trying to cover up the killing.
A maverick and outsider who chain-smoked, drove a Jaguar and loved sailing on the sea east of Beijing with his wife and two children, Mr. Heywood told friends he met Mr. Bo in the 1990s in the northeastern industrial city of Dalian, where Mr. Bo served the city’s mayor. He told one friend, a British journalist named Tom Reed, that he sent out letters of self-introduction to a flock of officials. “Mr. Bo answered him,” Mr. Reed said.
In Dalian, Mr. Heywood met Wang Lu, whom he married and who some friends have suggested provided his entrée to the Bos. Later on, Mr. Heywood told friends, he was instrumental in getting their son Guagua in making the contacts that eased his way to Oxford.
Mr. Reed, who said he had a friend of Mr. Heywood’s in China, said in an interview that the exact nature of his relations with the Bos was always unclear. “I didn’t get the impression it was anything commercial,” Mr. Reed said. “I got the impression it was much more informal."
