Making of a politicion

The last of the revolutionary “eight immortal” Party elders to “go meet Marx”, Bo Yibo died in January 2007 at the age of 98, having wielded enormous influence on Chinese politics from behind the scenes until the very end.

Right up until he died, the elder Bo lobbied tirelessly to advance the political career of his son Xilai, who at first rose steadily but slowly through the provincial Party ranks in northeast China with his beautiful new wife by his side.

Gu gave birth to Bo Guagua (a name which means “melon melon” in Chinese), in 1987, and in 1992 Bo Xilai was named mayor of Dalian, thanks in part to his father’s staunch support and incessant backroom dealing.

It was here in this seaside city of 6m people that Bo began to formulate his trademark political style.

At various times a colony of Britain, Russia and Japan, Dalian is China’s northernmost warm water port and one of the most important cities in the industrial northeastern region formerly known as Manchuria.

Bo’s decade-long tenure as Dalian mayor coincided with the city’s transformation from a grim industrial port city into a dynamic showcase of China’s surging economic growth. He strongly encouraged foreign investment, especially from nearby Japan and Korea and the city was soon drawing major investments from multinational giants like GE, Toshiba, Hyundai and Nokia.

His charming public persona, telegenic good looks and courting of China’s state-controlled media set him apart from the majority of grey, faceless Party bureaucrats.

And in contrast to most other regional Chinese leaders he paid attention to the environment and the quality of life in Dalian’s urban centre, banning motorcycles from downtown and planting lush parks throughout the city.

Even today, more than a decade after Bo officially moved on from his role as mayor, most ordinary people remember him fondly as someone who improved their lives and made them proud to be from Dalian.

“Perhaps us ordinary folk didn’t understand the full picture of what he was up to but every one of us thought he was great and that he really did a lot for this city,” one resident surnamed Wu told the FT. “He was a populist, which is unusual amongst Chinese leaders,” said one executive at a Dalian state-controlled media outlet. “He broke a lot of bureaucratic rules to get things done and that made him very popular amongst ordinary people.”

While the overwhelming public impression of him was positive, some complained he focused too much on grand monuments and cosmetic changes while ignoring the rights of individuals.

Under Bo, the authorities relocated large numbers of residents to the outskirts of town and planted so much expensive imported grass that locals dubbed it “Bo’s little grass”. An official in Dalian who worked under Bo says the city ran into financial trouble because his beautification campaigns cost so much. In contrast to his mass public appeal, Bo was widely hated and feared amongst his subordinates.

“He had a very mean character and would punish officials for the tiniest things,” said one person who worked for him in Dalian. “To foreigners and in front of the cameras he was always smiling but he would turn to us and his face would totally change to that of a tyrant.”

Dalian officials began carrying their mobile phones to bed and into the shower in the evening, because their boss often called emergency meetings in the middle of the night, a practice that Mao Zedong himself was famous for.

Bo usually slept all morning, made inspection tours in the afternoon and held meetings with subordinates at night and if officials did not come running at a moment’s notice they would be yelled at and humiliated and their careers would suffer.

His enormous power as mayor and later Communist party secretary of Dalian manifested itself in other, more sinister, incidents.

After Dalian-based journalist Jiang Weiping wrote three anonymous articles in a Hong Kong publication that criticised Bo for his role in a corruption scandal, the retribution was swift, according to Jiang’s account. He says he was abducted from outside his apartment block in December 2000 and driven to a naval base where he was confronted by Che Kemin, the Communist party secretary of the Dalian state security bureau.

Previously Bo Xilai’s personal cook, driver and bodyguard, he had been named one of the most powerful officials in the city’s feared security services on Bo’s orders, Jiang says. Che made clear that Jiang was there because he had offended Bo with his critical reporting.

The journalist was quickly sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of subversion and stealing state secrets. He served nearly six years before he was freed and fled to Canada. “When dealing with society’s problems, [Bo] draws the line at himself: those who obey him are given positions and promoted but those who don’t obey will lose their jobs or worse,” says Jiang, who now lives in Toronto.

Practitioners of the outlawed quasi-religious sect Falun Gong say Bo presided over one of the country's harshest crackdowns on the group; they have filed lawsuits against him in more than 10 countries, alleging torture and crimes against humanity.

Amongst his peers at higher levels of government, the man who had been a kind and timid teenager was now becoming known as an arrogant self-promoter whose ambition and egotism knew no bounds.

In 1998, Bo contacted the Chinese embassy in Washington DC and asked them to help him invite some high-profile US personalities to visit Dalian for its 10th international fashion festival. The embassy came up with a list of elder US statesmen, including former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and former President Jimmy Carter, but Bo was impatient and insistent – he wanted Sylvester Stallone and would not accept anyone else.

The bemused embassy staff contacted Stallone’s agent but were told he was booked solid for the next four years. In the end, Bo had to settle for Alexander Haig, another former US secretary of state. “He was already out of control – he thought he could summon anyone in the world,” said one person who worked with him around this time.

A number of authors and journalists were commissioned to write glowing hagiographies of Bo and his time in Dalian as a way of boosting his profile on the national stage.

This highly unusual public campaign revealed Bo's flair for propaganda and was part of an attempt, backed by his extended family, to enter the elite 350-member central committee at the 15th Communist party congress in 1997.

But in a sweeping rejection of the concept of hereditary rule, Bo and most other “princeling” candidates did not make the grade and were not accepted into the Central committee that year.

This was one in a series of disappointments that saw Bo repeatedly passed over for advancement despite, or possibly because of, his overwhelming certainty that he was destined to rule the country.

“Traditionally Chinese politics favours those who are highly competent but modest and low-key – like [President] Hu Jintao or [President-in-waiting] Xi Jinping,” one senior Communist party theorist and advisor to the leadership told the FT. “Bo was far too much of a flashy self-promoter, far too arrogant and ambitious and that counted against him.”