Put together two of these, and have yourself a newspaper article! (I've limited myself to ones not yet in the Western media, so no mysteriously dying British businessmen or 100 mistresses here.)
"In 1995, when he was at risk of falling, Chen Xitong [mayor of Beijing, went down for corruption] wrote a letter to Deng Xiaoping exposing Jiang Zemin's corruption. Deng gave the letter to Bo Yibo to deal with, and Bo gave it back to Jiang. That's why Jiang adopted Bo Xilai as a protege and always protected him."
"The protests in Chongqing over the weekend were much bigger than the reports claimed; there were nearly a hundred thousand people there." (That one was from a Xinhua reporter)
"Wang Lijun was investigating Wen Jiabao's wife's diamond trade." (An interesting example, here; Wen's wife's diamond empire seems to have made it into common knowledge in the Sinosphere suddenly thanks to this scandal refocusing attention on the top leadership. This is one reason they're slightly panicky; bringing down Bo has made everyone be examined as greedy bastards, rather than detached technocrats.)
"Bo had his son by his first wife detained, so that his business antics wouldn't embarass the family."
"Bo had his own teams of wumaodang in Chongqing, solely dedicated to praising him online."
"Bo had his own teams of wumaodang in Chongqing, solely dedicated to praising him online."
ISTR a previous B&T post indicating that it's actually surprisingly cheap to rent yourself an online following, so this one seems more credible.
Posted by: dsquared | April 16, 2012 at 12:44 PM
That one was from a guy who used to work under Bo at the Ministry of Commerce. It actually raises an interesting question; there's a bunch of technocrats who believe that the CCP can use the Internet to directly access public feeling, but presumably there's a bunch of clever bastards who realize that they can fake that information too.
Posted by: JamesP | April 16, 2012 at 01:09 PM