The data dump technique over Bo doesn't seem to have worked: a search for Bo Xilai on Sina Weibo right now gets you 7 milliion results, and some interesting theorising:
“From Dalian to Liaoning, from Liaoning to the Ministry of Commerce, from the Ministry of Commerce to Chongqing, Bo Xilai brought disease wherever he went. What does this approximately 20-year career track show? [If] Bo Xilai was poor at managing people, [does that not mean] that every level of government was also imprudent in managing Bo? Does this type of phenomenon not require reflection? Shouldn’t we seek out who’s responsible?”
An significant component of regime stability is the perception that while lower level cadres may be corrupt, higher level ones - certainly at the Politburo level - are honest: the old 'mountains high, emperor far away' thing. It's by no means a universal perception and seems to have been fading in recent years, but it's still there: it informs the classic structure of mass incidents, where rioters appeal to justice to those on high from their local oppressors. This was one of the reasons why I thought Bo would just vanish into house arrest. The Party seems to have decided that it wants Bo nailed publicly so much that it's prepared to blow this useful perception sky high. He's technically no higher up than Chen Liangyu in Shanghai but his princeling background and general prominence makes him much more of a central figure, especially since he's from the same family-party milieu as Xi Jinping. At any rate, it seems like no-one was arguing for him unless this took the form of an argument as to why Politburo members don't kill each other these days. Also:
Translating this again, this release–which has been vetted over and over again–is trying to emphasize two levels of meaning: The first is that Bo [Xilai] took bribes himself, the second is that Bo [Xilai] and his wife [Gu Kailai] conspired together for their son’s benefit. How did they conspire? What were they conspiring to get?
Dunno. Degree at Oxford? But then Guagua spent a lot of time here up till a couple of years ago, and was quite the man about town. So who knows what we're going to hear.
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