Mr Bo did not just break with communist norms; he flouted them. He did not play nice with the other top leaders or princelings, the descendants of prominent and influential senior communist officials. For example, his overzealous prosecution of alleged mobster Gong Gangmo led to the jailing of his defence lawyer, Li Zhuang, whose boss was Fu Yang, another princeling. While the families of many prominent party leaders have acquired prodigious wealth enabling them to send offspring abroad for education, they have mostly managed to keep a low profile. It helped neither Mr Bo nor the party when his son drew attention in China for poor academic performance and taking pictures urinating against a fence at Oxford, kissing foreign girls, and driving around in a Ferrari that should have cost several times his father’s salary. Finally, the involvement and death of a foreigner crossed a distinct line. As I argue in a recent paper, foreigners tend to receive special treatment in China lest they spread a bad impression of the country. Whether or not there is any truth to the allegations of poison, it seems likely that Mr Bo’s wife was using Mr Heywood to funnel money out of China. Worse yet, his death brought the affair to the attention of the world.

 

 

The low profile maintained by top party leaders is a vital part of their image as unelected but competent and principled technocrats. They cannot afford undue attention, which is likely to reveal them as a bunch of over-privileged backstabbing autocrats. Bo Xilai’s actual crimes may not have been exceptional, but the attention he attracted was,and that was his real crime.”