Anatomy of China’s Money and Murder Scandal

[Richard]

Cracks in the vaunted Chinese political dam...

Richard

Anatomy of China’s Money and Murder Scandal

Allegations of bribery, corruption, even charges of murder has one of China's most powerful families sitting on the outside of power looking in.

Bo Xilai was once a superstar in the Chinese Communist Party, but no longer. He's been under the microscope for his own abuse of power and lost his job because of it. Additionally, his wife is accused of murdering a influential English business man, and his son can't stay out of the tabloids for his partying ways.

But this is about more than a corrupt family. This scandal has rocked China's Communist Party and has pulled back the curtain on the Chinese political system, giving us a chance to take a unique glimpse into an increasingly fractured government.

Joining us to discuss China's public relations nightmare is Richard McGregor, Washington Bureau Chief for the Financial Times.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/around-t...235341048.html

Ousted Chinese Leader Is Said to Have Spied on Other Top Officials
NYT, 25 Apr 2012

When Hu Jintao, China’s top leader, picked up the telephone last August to talk to a senior anticorruption official visiting Chongqing, special devices detected that he was being wiretapped — by local officials in that southwestern metropolis.

The discovery of that and other wiretapping led to an official investigation that helped topple Chongqing’s charismatic leader, Bo Xilai, in a political cataclysm that has yet to reach a conclusion.

Until now, the downfall of Mr. Bo has been cast largely as a tale of a populist who pursued his own agenda too aggressively for some top leaders in Beijing and was brought down by accusations that his wife had arranged the murder of Neil Heywood, a British consultant, after a business dispute. But the hidden wiretapping, previously alluded to only in internal Communist Party accounts of the scandal, appears to have provided another compelling reason for party leaders to turn on Mr. Bo.

The story of how China’s president was monitored also shows the level of mistrust among leaders in the one-party state. To maintain control over society, leaders have embraced enhanced surveillance technology. But some have turned it on one another — repeating patterns of intrigue that go back to the beginnings of Communist rule.

(Cont'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/26/wo...officials.html