You may have heard a saying: Bo Xilai was Xi Jinping before he took power, and Xi Jinping is Bo Xilai after he took power. Xi Jinping and Bo Xilai’s life trajectories are extremely similar, but in the end, one became king and the other a loser. It can be said to be the most dramatic scene in the history of the CCP’s power struggle. So, how did Bo Xilai, the red second-generation political strongman who once had the most hope of replacing Xi Jinping, fail?
Hello everyone, welcome to Er Ye’s Story. On November 13, 2011, British businessman Neil Heywood flew urgently from the UK to Chongqing, China, after receiving a mysterious phone call. Before departing, Heywood had a premonition that this trip to China would not be good, so he handed a stack of secret documents to his lawyer, instructing the lawyer to make these documents public if he had an accident. Heywood’s premonition was correct, and on this trip to Chongqing, he eventually lost his life. But as he expected, the documents he exposed not only made the world aware of a bizarre political conspiracy, but also caused an unprecedented earthquake in the CCP’s political arena.
In 2011, it was a time of infinite glory in Chongqing’s politics. Under the leadership of Bo Xilai, a member of the Political Bureau of the CCP Central Committee and the Secretary of the Chongqing Municipal Party Committee, the vigorous singing of red songs and the crackdown on organized crime began. The so-called singing of red songs meant singing red songs, inheriting red classics, and carrying out red education, etc., openly returning to the extreme left-wing line that the CCP had abandoned. The so-called crackdown on organized crime was to fabricate and frame various charges in the name of cracking down on organized crime and eliminating evil, and to carry out a major purge of the political and business circles, and to confiscate the property of private enterprises by violent means. Whether it was singing red songs or cracking down on organized crime, it was all for Bo Xilai to cater to the deep-rooted extreme left-wing thought in China’s soil and to accumulate political capital for himself. The whole country knew that his goal was far more than just being a local official in Chongqing. Although the CCP had already determined Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang as the successors at that time, for Bo Xilai, this was obviously something he could not and would not accept.
Although Bo Xilai was engaged in a Cultural Revolution revival in Chongqing, he was actually a typical victim of the Cultural Revolution. In the Cultural Revolution, his family suffered a tragic fate. In November 1965, as a prelude to Mao Zedong’s downfall of Liu Shaoqi, Old Mao launched the 61 Traitors Case. Bo Yibo, Bo Xilai’s father, who was then the Vice Premier of the State Council and a veteran of the CCP, was implicated. On New Year’s Day in 1967, Bo Yibo, who was recuperating in Guangzhou, was escorted to Beijing by Red Guards with his arms and legs tied, and began a 12-year prison sentence. On January 15 of the same year, Bo Yibo’s wife, Hu Ming, who was also Bo Xilai’s mother, was escorted to Beijing and eventually died on the train.
Subsequently, the Bo family almost suffered a devastating disaster. Bo Yibo’s three sons, including Bo Xilai, were all thrown into prison for labor reform starting in 1968. Bo Xilai was imprisoned in the Beiyuan Juvenile Detention Center in Lishui Bridge, Beijing, for as long as 5 years. This special labor reform experience is the labor in Bo Xilai’s resume from 1968 to 1972. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that the Bo family was a typical victim of the Cultural Revolution, with the whole family in prison, the mother being persecuted to death, and almost the family destroyed.
But no one expected that many years later, Bo Xilai would be the first high-ranking CCP official to fully revive the Cultural Revolution. He even quoted a Cultural Revolution slogan when a reporter questioned his singing of red songs and crackdown on organized crime: “Dare to compete with evil ghosts, and not yield an inch to the overlord.” A victim of the Cultural Revolution revived the Cultural Revolution, which is truly a great irony of history.
Bo Xilai and Xi Jinping are very similar in this regard. Xi Jinping’s family was also persecuted very badly in the Cultural Revolution, and even the plot of entering the juvenile detention center is the same, but his thinking after taking office is the same as Bo Xilai’s. These Red Guards who grew up in the Cultural Revolution have disabilities in their thinking and personality.
In the book “The Historical Story I Experienced: How Liu Shaoqi’s Treason Was Determined” by writer Yang Guang, a black history of Bo Xilai is recorded: After Bo Xilai’s father was overthrown in the Cultural Revolution, in order to draw a clear line with his father, Bo Xilai publicly beat his father at his father’s criticism meeting, and even broke Bo Yibo’s three ribs. Although the authenticity of this anecdote cannot be confirmed, judging from Bo Xilai’s later ruthless style of doing things, it is not groundless.
In February 1978, on the eve of Bo Yibo’s rehabilitation and return to the political stage, Bo Xilai also entered Peking University through the back door, relying on his father’s relationship, and began his meteoric rise. After being rehabilitated, Bo Yibo successively served as Vice Premier of the State Council and Vice Chairman of the Central Advisory Commission of the CCP, and was one of the so-called eight major elders of the CCP. Under his father’s protection, Bo Xilai also began his rapid promotion.
The CCP launched a third echelon plan in the early 1980s to cultivate successors. Each red family had a quota, and the Bo family’s candidate was Bo Xilai, and the Xi family’s candidate was Xi Jinping. Bo Xilai’s political career started almost the same as Xi Jinping’s. He graduated from the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1982, and after a short period of time in the Research Office of the Secretariat of the Central Committee and the General Office of the CCP Central Committee, he was sent to Jin County, Dalian City, Liaoning Province as Deputy Secretary of the County Party Committee, and then promoted to Secretary. In 1993, he became the Mayor of Dalian City.
During Bo Xilai’s administration in Dalian, he attracted a large amount of foreign investment, actively improved Dalian’s natural environment, urban appearance, and infrastructure, and was committed to transforming Dalian from a traditional planned economy industrial city to a tourist city. To be realistic, compared with Xi Jinping, who was mediocre in Fujian, Bo Xilai’s achievements in Liaoning were much stronger, and his personal qualities were also obviously higher than Xi Jinping’s. For example, he was fluent in English and could speak English.
With these achievements, in September 1999, Bo Xilai was promoted to Member of the Standing Committee of the Liaoning Provincial Party Committee of the CCP and Secretary of the Dalian Municipal Party Committee. In 2001, he became the Governor of Liaoning Province, and in 2002, he was elected as a member of the Central Committee. In 2004, he went to Beijing to become the Minister of Commerce. With his background as a red second generation and his reputation in the political arena at the time, Bo Xilai, along with Chen Liangyu, Xi Jinping, Li Yuanchao, and Li Keqiang, were considered to be the main candidates for the next generation of CCP leaders, and he was a political star, and for a time he was in the limelight.
But because Bo Xilai was born into a noble family and was smooth sailing after entering the political arena, he was very high-profile, and this high-profile personality also attracted countless enemies, including his direct superior, Wu Yi, the Vice Premier of the State Council. Wu Yi suddenly retired in 2007, and she didn’t even want her civilian position. At the time, the media revealed that Wu Yi’s retirement was actually conditional, and she didn’t want Bo Xilai to succeed her position.
Even with these obstacles, Bo Xilai’s political career was still optimistic, because he not only had a certain reputation among the people, but also had strong allies within the party to support him, such as Zhou Yongkang, the political and legal czar of the CCP, who was his open ally. Almost everyone believed that he would definitely be elected to the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau at the 18th National Congress of the CCP.
But Bo Xilai also didn’t expect that his great cause would be ruined by his wife’s momentary lapse. Bo Xilai’s wife, Gu Kailai, was also a genuine red second generation. Gu Kailai’s father, Gu Jingsheng, was a CCP general, and was once the political commissar of the 15th Army of the Chinese People’s Volunteers, and later served as the political commissar and secretary of the Party Committee of the Fifth Academy of the Ministry of National Defense. Gu Kailai entered Peking University after the Cultural Revolution and was a classmate of Bo Xilai.
But before knowing Gu Kailai, Bo Xilai already had a political marriage. His first wife was Li Danyu, the daughter of Li Xuefeng, the former Secretary of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee. They married in 1976 and gave birth to a son, Bo Wangzhi, in 1977. Later, Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai hooked up, and they did not hesitate to go to court with Li Danyu, and they fought a three-year divorce lawsuit, and they divorced in 1984. Gu Kailai later gave birth to a son for Bo Xilai, who was Bo Guagua.
When Bo Guagua was 11 years old, Gu Kailai sent him to study at Harrow School in the UK, and he entered Oxford University in 2006. All of this was arranged through British businessman Neil Heywood. Heywood’s relationship with the Bo family started very early. In the early 1990s, when Heywood was in his early 20s, he went to Beijing Language and Culture University to study Chinese. After that, he moved to Dalian, Liaoning, where he met his wife and had two children. It was just
that Bo Xilai was in charge of Dalian, and Heywood wrote a letter to Bo Xilai expressing his willingness to help him attract foreign investment into Dalian, thus establishing a close relationship. He was also Bo Guagua’s English teacher.
After Bo Xilai took charge of the Ministry of Commerce in 2004, Heywood went to Beijing to work with him. Heywood didn’t do these things for the Bo family as a living Lei Feng, and he also received considerable commissions and benefits from it. It can be said without exaggeration that he was actually the operator and white glove of the Bo family’s overseas assets. In 2007, Gu Kailai bought a luxury villa in France, and the owner’s name was Heywood. But this cooperative relationship changed in 2011. In that year, Gu Kailai asked Heywood to transfer the French villa under his name to another white glove, Jiang Feng.
Jiang Feng was a beautiful debater at the international university debate in the 1990s, and later a CCTV host. Heywood was of course unhappy when he heard this news, and he thought that Gu Kailai wanted to change the white glove and abandon him. He had served the Bo family for 20 years, and naturally he was not reconciled. So in May 2011, he made a request, hoping that Gu Kailai would compensate him with 1.4 million pounds. Gu Kailai was usually powerful and said what she meant, and no one dared to make conditions with her, so she simply refused Heywood. Heywood was furious and threatened Gu Kailai, saying that he would expose her.
Gu Kailai could not tolerate this blackmail, and she became ruthless and had murderous intentions. The tyrants and traitors in history need henchmen to achieve their goals, and these henchmen are cruel officials. Bo Xilai also needed a cruel official in Chongqing to sing red songs and crack down on organized crime, and this person was Wang Lijun. Wang Lijun was acquainted with Bo Xilai when he was in charge of Liaoning, and he was originally the director of the Public Security Bureau of Tieling City, Liaoning Province, and he had a certain reputation for cracking down on organized crime. After Bo Xilai took charge of Chongqing, he brought Wang Lijun to Chongqing. Wang Lijun repaid his kindness, and after arriving in Chongqing, he immediately began the so-called crackdown on organized crime according to Bo Xilai’s intentions.
During this period, Wang Lijun fabricated a large number of unjust and false cases, and made many officials and private entrepreneurs suffer. During the crackdown on organized crime, he confiscated at least hundreds of billions of private assets, and their whereabouts are now a mystery, with at least 20 billion missing. Wang Lijun also launched a harsh literary inquisition. A Chongqing native named Xie Suming was arrested the next day and sentenced to one year of re-education through labor for cursing Wang Lijun as a hypocritical politician on the Tianya Forum. Another Chongqing native, Fang Hong, was also sentenced to one year of re-education through labor for satirizing Wang Lijun as Bo Xilai’s running dog on Weibo.
Wang Lijun had Bo Xilai as his backer and was extremely arrogant. Famous lawyer Li Zhuang interviewed his secretary Xin Jianwei after Wang Lijun’s incident, and because he forgot to renew Wang Lijun’s room card at the hotel, he was dismissed by Wang Lijun and imprisoned for more than 300 days as a protective umbrella for organized crime. This is for the people closest to him. Wang Lijun also, at Bo Xilai’s behest, listened in on the conversations of high-ranking CCP leaders, especially Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao. This kind of behavior would be a dead end once exposed. Wang Lijun tied his life to Bo Xilai’s boat, and they would prosper or perish together, and there was no way out.
Wang Lijun’s actions in Chongqing, although protected by Bo Xilai, offended many people with backgrounds, and he was soon reported to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. At that time, Bo Xilai was singing red songs and cracking down on organized crime, and his target was the former two secretaries of the Chongqing Municipal Party Committee, He Guoqiang and Wang Yang. The crackdown on organized crime immediately after the previous one left, indicating that the previous one was incompetent. And He Guoqiang was the Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, and Wang Yang was the Secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee, and they were powerful figures with real power, and they would naturally not stand idly by. After Wang Lijun was reported to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, in October 2011, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection launched an investigation into Wang Lijun, and first investigated his old nest, Tieling City, Liaoning Province.
Like Wang Lijun, a high-ranking official in the political and legal system, there must be problems if he is investigated. Wang Lijun panicked when he learned that the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection was investigating him, and he wanted to ask Bo Xilai for help. But it was the eve of the 18th National Congress of the CCP, and whether Bo Xilai could successfully become a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau was the key moment, and any political handle caught by his opponents could make him fail. So Bo Xilai hesitated and decisively abandoned Wang Lijun. Wang Lijun was a tool to achieve political goals, and he became a hot potato and should be thrown away.
Bo Xilai’s abandonment of himself made Wang Lijun very panicked. Without the protection of his master, there was only a dead end in front of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. Coincidentally, the murder case of Gu Kailai happened at this time. After Gu Kailai was threatened by Heywood, instead of spending money to avoid disaster, she hardened her heart to solve Heywood. On November 13, 2011, Gu Kailai called Heywood and invited him to Chongqing to discuss. Before Heywood set off, he left the materials to his lawyer and then went to the appointment.
The next day, Gu Kailai lured Heywood to the Nanshan Lijing Holiday Hotel in Chongqing, and the houseboy Zhang Xiaojun forced Heywood to be pressed down, and injected him with the highly toxic cyanide, which caused Heywood to die on the spot. After the incident, Gu Kailai called Wang Lijun and asked him to handle it. Under Wang Lijun’s arrangement, all the staff of the hotel were replaced, and the official statement said that Heywood died of excessive drinking. No autopsy was performed, and Heywood’s body was cremated, and his ashes were airlifted back to London. Due to the rapid cleanup, the British side had suspicions but no evidence, and Heywood was not an important figure, and it seemed that it was over.
But Wang Lijun obviously kept an eye on things. When the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection investigated him, Bo Xilai was preparing to abandon the pawn to protect the car, and he wanted to use the murder case to blackmail Bo Xilai to protect himself. On the surface, he followed Gu Kailai’s request to suppress the matter, but in fact, he left a set of materials and buried a landmine. Gu Kailai later learned about Wang Lijun’s materials from certain channels, and of course she was angry, but this woman had no political wisdom and could only be tough. In late December 2011, Gu Kailai, taking advantage of Wang Lijun’s business trip, personally led people to search Wang Lijun’s office, trying to find the materials, but to no avail.
Gu Kailai explained that the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection was going to investigate you, and moving the things out was to protect you. But Wang Lijun didn’t believe the ghost words and accelerated the pace of the showdown. On January 28, 2011, when Wang Lijun reported his work to Bo Xilai, he brought up Gu Kailai’s murder case, which was equivalent to a direct showdown: if you don’t protect me, your wife’s matter can’t be covered up. Bo Xilai was determined to seize the supreme power, and he had always done things his own way, how could he tolerate a domestic servant blackmailing him? He slapped Wang Lijun in the face on the spot.
Subsequently, at the end of December 2011, Wang Lijun’s 11 confidants were arrested and investigated. On February 2, 2012, Wang Lijun’s work assignment as the Deputy Mayor of Chongqing was adjusted, and he was no longer concurrently the Director of the Public Security Bureau. Wang Lijun knew that Bo Xilai was going to get rid of him, and he began to consider how to get away. In Chongqing, Bo Xilai was in charge, and besides the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection in Chongqing staring at him, Wang Lijun knew that there was no way out, and there was only one way to defect. But it was not easy for an official of this level to leave, and Bo Xilai was strictly guarding against him and watching him all day long.
After all, Wang Lijun had been a policeman. On February 8, 2012, he secretly disguised himself as a woman, put on a long hair wig, successfully got rid of the surveillance and drove alone, taking the materials of Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai from Chongqing to the US Consulate in Chengdu. After arriving, he said that his life was threatened because he was investigating a case, and he asked the US government for protection and wrote an application for political asylum.
After learning of Wang Lijun’s defection, Bo Xilai immediately instructed the Mayor of Chongqing, Huang Qifan, to take a large number of armed police to intercept Wang Lijun. After Wang Lijun entered the US Consulate, the Chongqing armed police surrounded the consulate and demanded that the Americans hand over the person. At that time, all parties were at daggers drawn, and the atmosphere was highly tense, and even Hollywood movies were not so good-looking. The relationship between China and the United States was still in the honeymoon period at that time, and the US Ambassador to China, Gary Locke, immediately reported to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton did not want to get involved in the CCP’s internal strife, fearing that it would affect the relations between the two countries, and rejected Wang Lijun’s request for asylum.
US officials informed the Chinese side, and the head of the Ministry of State Security of the CCP personally led the team to the US Consulate to take the person. The day after Wang Lijun’s defection, the Chongqing Municipal Government issued an official statement saying that Wang Lijun was under high mental stress due to long-term overwork, and his physical condition was seriously unwell, and he was now undergoing a vacation-style treatment with consent. This news, which tried to cover up the truth, and the ridiculous term vacation-style treatment, became popular all over the world for a while, and not only was it hyped by international media, but also ridiculed and discussed by domestic people. This indicated that the political star Bo Xilai’s political career was coming to an end.
One month after the defection incident, it was the time of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Bo Xilai first publicly stated at a press conference on March 9, 2012, that he felt pain about the defection incident and admitted that he had misjudged people. This was Bo Xilai’s last public appearance before being double-regulated. In fact, two days before Bo Xilai’s statement, The New York Times revealed that the Political Bureau of the CCP had held a special meeting to vote on the Wang Lijun incident. Under the leadership of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, 8 of the nine Standing Committee members supported the investigation of Bo Xilai, and only Zhou Yongkang, Bo Xilai’s staunch ally, opposed it.
Before this, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao jointly met with local officials and veterans within the party, including Jiang Zemin, Li Peng, Qiao Shi, Zhu Rongji, and Li Ruihuan, and they all agreed to investigate Bo Xilai. Being able to reach a consensus can only show that the Wang Lijun incident had too bad an impact, and it severely slapped the CCP in the face internationally and domestically, and it showed the most ugly side of the power struggle of the CCP’s high-level to the world, and almost no one dared to protect Bo Xilai. After a consensus was reached within the party, on March 14, 2012, Wen Jiabao publicly stated at a press conference that the Chongqing Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government must deeply reflect on the Wang Lijun incident and learn lessons. In addition, Wen Jiabao stated that the mistakes and feudal influences of the Cultural Revolution had not been completely eliminated, directly denying Bo Xilai’s singing of red songs and crackdown on organized crime. Wen Jiabao’s speech clearly announced that Bo Xilai’s downfall was inevitable.
On March 15, the first day after the end of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the CCP announced that Bo Xilai would no longer serve as the Secretary of the Chongqing Municipal Party Committee of the CCP and entered a state of house arrest. During the downfall of Bo Xilai, he tried everything he could, and the process was more exciting than the public imagined. Bo Xilai had been working in the party for many years and had many political allies, and the most loyal one was Zhou Yongkang, the political and legal czar. Zhou Yongkang was originally from the Jiang Zemin faction, and during the Hu-Wen administration, he controlled the political and legal system and the armed police force. Under the model of nine dragons controlling the water, he was a powerful figure. His family had deep interests in the oil system. Before his retirement, Zhou Yongkang hoped to find someone to protect his interests, and the successor he favored was Bo Xilai. Bo Xilai also needed Zhou Yongkang, a strong ally, to fight for the opportunity to become a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau, especially when Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang had become the openly designated successors, and the position of Secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission was Bo Xilai’s last and best opportunity.
Objectively speaking, if there had been no Wang Lijun incident, Bo Xilai, with his qualifications and Zhou Yongkang’s support, might have been able to become a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau. But he didn’t expect to be continuously harmed by his wife and Wang Lijun. Obviously, as a political strongman, he and his allies would not easily surrender. On the afternoon of March 8, 2012, Zhou Yongkang, knowing that Bo Xilai was going to be investigated, still participated in the deliberation of the Chongqing delegation at the National People’s Congress and publicly supported Bo Xilai. On the morning of March 12, Zhou Yongkang went to the Chongqing delegation again and affirmed the Chongqing model promoted by Bo Xilai. Zhou Yongkang’s statement was almost a direct challenge to Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao.
Not only that, Zhou Yongkang also decided to fight to the death and launched an extremely rare military coup since the founding of the CCP. At midnight on March 19, 2012, Zhou Yongkang mobilized the armed police force under his direct control to surround Xinhua Gate and Tiananmen Square, preparing to take over Zhongnanhai. The outside world widely rumored that Zhou Yongkang’s move was not only to seize Xu Ming, the white glove of the Bo Xilai case’s key witness, but also to take the opportunity to control Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao. For a time, the words “gunshots on Chang’an Avenue” and “Zhou Yongkang” became forbidden words on the Chinese Internet.
But Zhou Yongkang never expected that the most taboo thing about the coup was the leakage of information. At a critical moment, a key figure informed Hu Jintao, and this person was Fu Zhenghua, the director of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau. Fu Zhenghua was originally a subordinate of Zhou Yongkang, and with Bo Xilai’s downfall already decided, Fu Zhenghua felt that it was too dangerous to follow Zhou Yongkang’s rebellion, and he turned against him at the last minute, and he revealed Zhou Yongkang’s coup plan in its entirety, and also reported many things about Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun, including the act of listening in on the high-level of Zhongnanhai.
Before Zhou Yongkang’s coup, Hu Jintao had secretly replaced the leaders of the 38th Army, the CCP’s ace force stationed in Langfang, and replaced them with his confidants. After the March 19 coup, Hu Jintao immediately mobilized the 38th Army to enter Beijing to protect the emperor. After all, the 38th Army was a regular army and was much more powerful than the armed police. After a brief confrontation and exchange of fire with the armed police outside the Political and Legal Affairs Building, they quickly disarmed. In the evening, many Beijing citizens heard gunshots. After the 38th Army controlled the situation, Zhou Yongkang was forced to admit defeat and was spared by Jiang Zemin’s personal plea, but it was inevitable that he would fall with Bo Xilai.
In this failed coup, Li Runtian, the deputy director of the Central Security Bureau and in charge of Wen Jiabao’s security, was also drawn in by Zhou Yongkang and accepted the investigation together. After Xi Jinping took office, the Political and Legal Affairs Commission was stripped of its command of the armed police. On July 29, 2014, Zhou Yongkang was officially double-regulated, and on June 11, 2015, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Tianjin, breaking the unspoken rule that the CCP’s Standing Committee members would not be sentenced. Zhou Yongkang’s coup failed, and Bo Xilai had no more capital and was completely out of power and became a turtle in a jar.
On April 10, 2012, the CCP announced that Bo Xilai would no longer hold the positions of Central Committee member and Political Bureau member and would accept an internal party investigation. On September 28 of the same year, Bo Xilai was expelled from the party and dismissed from public office, and transferred to the judicial organs for legal proceedings. In August 2013, in the Jinan Intermediate People’s Court, under the testimony of his wife Gu Kailai and his domestic servants Xu Ming and Wang Lijun, Bo Xilai was sentenced to life imprisonment, deprived of political rights for life, and all his personal property was confiscated. The red second generation, who was once more dazzling and powerful than Xi Jinping, eventually fell into a complete defeat and became a prisoner.
Looking back today, everything Xi Jinping has done since taking office is a copycat version of Bo Xilai. He also sings red songs and cracks down on organized crime, and he completely copies Bo Xilai’s Cultural Revolution model in Chongqing. Bo Xilai harmed Chongqing, and Xi Jinping harmed the whole of China. Therefore, Bo Xilai is the failed Xi Jinping, and Xi Jinping is the successful Bo Xilai, which is completely fair. These two red second generations who grew up in the Cultural Revolution are both firm sons in the spirit of Mao Zedong. Although there are differences in their abilities, they are surprisingly consistent in their ideological realm and governance concepts. As victims of the Cultural Revolution, they eventually became supporters, promoters, and revivers of the Cultural Revolution, which is actually their inevitable path.
The reason why they can call the shots in the political arena is because of their red bloodline, and their power comes from the hereditary red gene, so they must advocate and promote the extreme left-wing line of the red country passing down from generation to generation. If Bo Xilai had not had an accident and become a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau, with his high-profile personality and political influence, he would never have been as submissive as Li Keqiang and Wang Yang, and he would inevitably have fought with Xi Jinping, and a situation of two dragons fighting for supremacy might have been formed. Xi Jinping’s desire to be the only one and achieve the current dictatorship might not have been so fast and easy. What China would be like is hard to say.
Of course, history has no ifs, and Bo Xilai and Xi Jinping are essentially birds of a feather, and neither of them is good. But their story of downfall gives us, especially ordinary people who are not familiar with the CCP’s power system, the opportunity to understand the darkest, most ugly, and most unbearable side of totalitarian politics. This side has been seen many times in the history of China from ancient times to the present, and it is expected that it will be seen in the future power struggles of the CCP.
Thank you for watching today’s Er Ye’s Story, see you next time.
感谢你收看今天的二爷故事，下期见。
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