China's Communist Party has suspended former high-flying politician Bo Xilai from its top ranks and named his wife a suspect in the murder of a British businessman, a dramatic turn in a scandal shaking leadership succession plans. The decision to banish Bo from the Central Committee and its Politburo effectively ends the career of China's brashest and most controversial politician, widely seen as pressing for a top post in China's next leadership to be settled later this year.
The official Xinhua news agency confirmed a Reuters report several hours earlier on Tuesday that Bo had been suspended from his party posts, and separately reported that his wife, Gu Kailai, was suspected in the murder of Briton Neil Heywood. "Comrade Bo Xilai is suspected of being involved in serious disciplinary violations," said the news agency said, citing a decision by the central party leadership to banish Bo from its top ranks.
"Police set up a team to reinvestigate the case of the British national Neil Heywood who was found dead in Chongqing," Xinhua said, referring to the sprawling south-western municipality where Bo was party chief until he was dismissed in March as a scandal surrounding him unfolded. The evidence indicated Heywood's death was a homicide and Gu Kailai and Zhang Xiaojun, an assistant in Bo's household, were "highly suspected," said the news agency, citing a dispute over unspecified "economic interests" between Gu and Heywood.
The Central Committee is a council of about 200 full members that meets about once a year and the Politburo is a more powerful body of about two dozen Central Committee members. The announcements are the latest twist in a furore over Bo and his family that erupted after his vice mayor, Wang Lijun, fled to a US consulate for 24 hours in February, alleging that Gu was involved in Heywood's death. The Communist Party is grappling with the volatile scandal months before it unveils a new line-up of leaders, a group Bo once yearned to join.
Bo's ouster has sparked public contention and revealed friction among China's leaders, pitting reformist Premier Wen Jiabao against conservative officials who sources have said were dismayed by the upheavals months before the party congress that announces the new leadership.
There were even outlandish rumours of an attempted coup. "(This) appears to represent the top leadership finally reaching an agreement that it must be seen to hang together in the run-up to the leadership succession, in order to put an end to the many wild speculations surrounding the Bo case," said Steve Tsang, a professor of Chinese studies at Nottingham University in Britain.
After the announcements, the People's Daily, the chief mouthpiece of the Communist Party, told officials and citizens to unite around President Hu Jintao. Hu retires at the end of the year, when Vice President Xi Jinping is almost certain to succeed him as China's top leader. Handsome and smartly dressed in a party of bland conformists, Bo arrived in Chongqing in 2007 and promoted the city as a bold egalitarian alternative model of growth for China. But his promotion of Mao Zedong-inspired "red" culture and a harsh crackdown on organised crime, prompted worries about a return to methods seen during the chaotic Cultural Revolution in the 1960s.