Bo Xilai attends the third plenary meeting of the National People's Congress (NPC) at The Great Hall Of The People on March 9, 2012 in Beijing.
Chinese politics are significantly shielded from the public, but that didn’t stop the Bo Xilai affair from becoming one of the most talked-about scandals of the year, both in China and abroad. In March, the rising political star was removed from his post as secretary of Chongqing’s Communist Party just months before the nation’s first leadership transition in a decade — a transition in which he was expected to play a big role. Bo’s downfall was set in motion when a former deputy, Wang Lijun, visited the U.S. consulate in Chengdu to reportedly pass on suspicions that Bo’s wife Gu Kailai was involved in the murder of British businessman and family friend Neil Heywood. Gu was promptly arrested, while Bo’s career was effectively derailed. According to Chinese state media, Gu didn’t contest the murder charges during a closed trial in August that lasted only seven hours. Officials maintained that Gu and a family aide, Zhang Xiaojun, poisoned Heywood over a business dispute. Gu believed that Heywood was a threat to her son Bo Guagua, who supposedly received assistance from Heywood while studying at Oxford University. While Gu and Zhang await sentencing (they could face the death penalty if convicted), Bo is being detained for “violating party discipline,” a charge that could include obstruction, abuse of power and corruption, and is expected to be tried in the Supreme People’s Court. While the government’s secrecy and media censorship make it difficult to determine what really happened, it seems that all parties involved are assumed guilty.