I trust the Chinese leadership to do the right thing by their national interests, but I do not trust the AmeriKan media to accurately report it:
"Chinese politician’s wife charged in British man’s death" by Andrew Jacobs | New York Times, July 27, 2012
BEIJING — Gu Kailai, the wife of the disgraced political leader Bo Xilai, has been charged in the killing of a British businessman, a crime that continues to roil the ruling Communist Party as it prepares for a once-in-a-decade change in leadership.
The official Xinhua news agency announced Thursday that Gu had been formally charged in the poisoning death of Neil Heywood, 41, whose body was found last November in a hotel in Chongqing, the municipality Bo led until his downfall.
Apparently Heywood was a MI-6 agent and this involves infiltration into China's ruling system as well as tit-for-tat spy games. None of that will make it into the intelligence operation we call a newspaper 'round h're.
Xinhua said a court in the city of Hefei will take the case.
“The facts of the two defendants’ crime are clear, and the evidence is irrefutable and substantial,’’ Xinhua said.
Although it repeated accusations that tied the slaying of Heywood to ‘‘a conflict over economic interests,’’ the announcement added two new details: It confirmed that Heywood had been poisoned, and it said Gu acted to protect her son, Bo Guagua, currently a graduate student at Harvard. The article omitted Bo Guagua’s full name, suggesting that prosecutors have decided not to implicate him in the crime.
The relationship between Heywood and one of China’s most fabled political families remains murky, but friends say that a decade ago he helped arrange private schooling in Britain for the younger Bo.
That's an AmeriKan media code word for a cover-up.
Those with knowledge of the party’s investigation say he was also involved in helping the family transfer overseas illicit funds.
Although family members described Heywood as a teetotaler, the authorities in Chongqing initially attributed his death to excessive drinking; with the permission of his Chinese-born wife, they hurriedly cremated his body. The case might have ended there but three months later, Wang Lijun, a trusted associate of Bo Xilai and his former police chief, made a dramatic bid for safety by entering the US consulate in Chengdu, 200 miles from Chongqing.
Related:
Bo Given the Bounce in China
Clinton Mouths Off in Mongolia
Cloak-and dagger intrigue in China?
Wang stayed overnight and reportedly told details of the killing to consular officials. The next day, he left in the protective custody of Beijing officials. His fate remains unclear.
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I'm sorry, readers, but this whole thing is starting to smell like crap to me.
"China speeds trial in Briton’s poisoning" August 10, 2012
HEFEI, China — The murder trial of Gu Kailai, the wife of deposed political leader Bo Xilai, began here Thursday morning and came to an end seven hours later, with officials saying that the defendant and an accomplice had all but confessed to poisoning a British businessman who had threatened the safety of Gu’s son.
The fall girl?
In a statement read to foreign journalists, the deputy director of the Hefei Intermediate People’s Court placed most of the blame on Gu, 53, saying she gave the Briton, Neil Heywood, a fatal dose of poison as they sat in a hotel room in Chongqing, a city in southwest China that was run by her husband until his downfall last spring.
“The criminal facts are clear; the evidence is solid,’’ said the court official, Tang Yigan.
A verdict will be announced later.
According to the statement, the killing occurred on the evening of Nov. 13 after Gu and Heywood spent time drinking together at a rented villa on the outskirts of the city. After consuming tea and alcohol, Heywood began to vomit and asked for a glass of water, at which point Gu ‘‘poured poison into his mouth,’’ the court said. The statement said the poison was prepared in advance and given to a family employee, Zhang Xiaojun, 33, who had accompanied Heywood to Chongqing from his home in Beijing.
The court provided no further detail of Zhang’s role, nor did it specify who prepared the poison.
Tang also said Heywood deserved some responsibility for his own death because he threatened the safety of Gu’s son, Bo Guagua, a recent graduate of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He did not elaborate on the nature of the threat.
Analysts believe the mitigating circumstances presented by the court — that Gu feared for the safety of her son — lessened the likelihood that she would face the death penalty.
Tang also portrayed Gu as emotionally frail.
He quoted her lawyers as saying Gu’s ‘‘ability to control her own behavior was weaker than a normal person.’’ The lawyers, he added, said they hoped for leniency given that she had assisted the authorities by revealing details about other people’s crimes.
The court’s statement raised questions because it did not explain the ‘‘economic interests’’ that had led to a dispute between Gu and Heywood, 41, an enigmatic figure and longtime friend. It also avoided mention of her husband, who reportedly knew about his wife’s crime and sought to cover it up.
The trial’s brevity suggests that Chinese leaders are eager to bring to a close an embarrassing scandal that strained Chinese-British relations and complicated an upcoming leadership transition scheduled for the fall.
The British Embassy had no immediate comment on the trial. The choice of the venue — in China’s eastern Anhui Province, hundreds of miles from the scene of Heywood’s death — highlighted the extent to which Communist Party leaders were seeking to minimize anything surprising that might arise during the painstakingly orchestrated trial.
Just think patsy terror plot trials, Americans.
Legal analysts say distance was not the only factor in choosing the provincial capital of Anhui: the president of the Supreme People’s Court, Wang Shengjun, has deep ties to the province, all but guaranteeing a compliant court. President Hu Jintao also comes from Anhui, as does Vice Premier Li Keqiang, the man presumed to be the future premier.
‘‘This trial is the outcome of a political struggle,’’ said Pu Zhiqiang, a prominent defense lawyer, referring to powerful enemies of Bo Xilai, a brash up-and-coming politician who alienated many party luminaries. ‘‘Any trial to which the central party pays this much attention had no chance of being fair.’’
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"Details emerge about Briton’s murder in China" August 11, 2012
BEIJING — Now that the murder trial of Gu Kailai has ended, far more detailed accounts have emerged from inside the courtroom on the case that prosecutors built against Gu, the wife of one of China’s most ambitious leaders. The accounts show her plotting with allies, including the local police chief, to protect her son from what she saw as the blackmail demands of the British business associate she is believed to have killed.
Prosecutors presented evidence that the Briton, Neil Heywood, had demanded tens of millions of dollars from Gu’s son, locked him up in a residence in England and sent an e-mail threatening to ‘‘destroy’’ him. In response, Gu sought help from the local police chief, who refused to go along with her plan to get rid of Heywood and later secretly recorded her confession after she poisoned him.
The tale gave a rare glimpse into the darkest corners of a Chinese ruling family....
The session raised as many questions as it answered. For starters, it failed to address the towering issue of what Bo Xilai knew of the crime and whether he had a role in its execution or cover-up.
Bo Guagua declined to comment for this article. Heywood’s mother said before the trial that the case was rooted in palace intrigue. Heywood’s wife, who is Chinese, could not be reached for comment.
People at the trial said the defense lawyers argued that the poison might not have been enough to kill Heywood, and that he probably died instead from drinking too much alcohol that night. The lawyers also said that Gu had manic depression and mild schizophrenia and was not in full control of her actions.
According to the courtroom accounts, Heywood, a longtime resident of China, met Bo Guagua in England around 2003.
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"Chinese politician's wife due to hear verdict" by Gillian Wong Associated Press / August 19, 2012
HEFEI, China—A fallen Chinese politician's wife who confessed to killing a British businessman is due to hear the verdict Monday in her murder trial, but Communist Party leaders may already have decided against a death penalty for fear it could incite public sympathy for her.
The conclusion of Gu Kailai's trial will be a step toward closing a scandal that has rocked the Chinese leadership at a sensitive time when it is preparing to hand over power to younger leaders. But even after the verdict is announced, questions will remain over the fate of her husband, Bo Xilai, a prominent figure who was dismissed in March as party secretary of the major city of Chongqing.
Gu is accused of killing Briton Neil Heywood, a former Bo family associate. State media say the two had a dispute over money and Heywood allegedly threatened her son. A family aide has been charged as an accessory.
State media say Gu confessed to intentional homicide, for which the penalty ranges from 10 years in prison to death. One option is a suspended death sentence that can be commuted later to a long prison term.
Chinese courts regularly impose death sentences for murder, rape and some nonviolent crimes.
They impose death sentences for corruption, and considering the high level of that in AmeriKa today it doesn't seem like a bad idea as a deterrent.
Any ruling will be politically delicate, and Chinese leaders might have decided to impose a lengthy prison term instead of death for fear that a more severe penalty might stir outrage or make Gu look like a scapegoat for her husband's misdeeds, political and legal analysts say. The party says Bo was removed due to unspecified violations.
That's what I think.
On Sunday, there was no sign of added security outside the Hefei Intermediate People's Court. Gu's one-day trial was held there Aug. 9 under heavy guard, and she was due back there on Monday.
If Gu becomes a target of sympathy, the scandal that has embarrassed China's government will drag on.
"If you execute her, what about Bo Xilai? You should also execute Bo Xilai, because when the story becomes fully known, it's highly likely that people will think that she was just a scapegoat for the whole thing," said Cheng Li, an expert in Chinese elite politics at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
"Then if you want to put Bo Xilai on the death penalty, that's a really, really dangerous thing."
No senior leader has been sentenced to death in recent decades, and having a party-controlled court system impose such a penalty could open the door to its use in future power struggles.
The family aide, Zhang Xiaojun, is expected to receive a lighter penalty.
Francois Godement, a China politics expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said other factors in Gu's favor are that state media say she confessed and a claim that she acted to defend her son after threats by Heywood.
Godement noted that senior leaders and their immediate relatives have been spared the death penalty since the end of the Cultural Revolution, the chaotic 1966-76 period that saw many party elders persecuted by ultraradical Red Guards.
One example is the 1998 corruption conviction of former Beijing Mayor Chen Xitong, who like Bo was a member of the party's ruling Politburo. Chen was sentenced to 16 years in prison, while lower-level figures have been put to death in other graft cases.
He Weifang, a legal scholar at Peking University, said he expected Gu's sentence to be somewhere between 15 years' jail and the death sentence with a reprieve. He cited in part Gu's status as the wife of a senior leader whose fate remains unclear even though many believe his political career to be over.
"Immediate execution is very unlikely. Not all intentional homicide cases result in death sentences," He said. "Everyone also still takes into consideration her special background. ... In China, it's impossible to make sure that everyone is equal before the law."
Same in AmeriKa, for the obviou$ rea$ons.
Gu's arrest and the ouster of her husband sparked the biggest political turbulence in China since the bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests in 1989.
The official Xinhua News Agency has depicted Gu as a depressed woman on medication who turned willful murderer after Heywood threatened the safety of her son, Bo Guagua. Gu is accused of luring the victim to a Chongqing hotel, getting him drunk and then pouring cyanide into his mouth.
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"Chinese leaders look to move beyond murder scandal" August 21, 2012
HEFEI, China — The sentencing of the wife of a disgraced Chinese politician Monday for the murder of a British businessman clears the way for the ruling Communist Party to deal with a huge political scandal involving her husband before a leadership transition this fall.
Gu Kailai was sent to prison and given a suspended death sentence for the murder of Neil Heywood.
Her husband, Bo Xilai, was formerly one of China’s most prominent politicians before being stripped of his Politburo post in a corruption scandal. He has not been directly implicated in the murder but is accused of unspecified grave violations of party discipline.
Meaning he was collaborating with foreign spies.
‘‘They are eager to close the case and move on,’’ said Dali Yang, director of the University of Chicago Center in Beijing. But it isn’t clear whether the party will deal with Bo internally or put him on trial and risk further harm to its image.
Gu’s suspended sentence will almost certainly be commuted after two years to life in prison, a relatively lenient punishment resulting from her cooperation with investigators and what the court deemed her mental instability at the time of Heywood’s death by cyanide poisoning last November.
Family aide Zhang Xiaojun, accused of abetting the murder, was sentenced to nine years, Hefei Intermediate People’s Court official Tang Yigan said.
Gu’s arrest and the ouster of her husband sparked the biggest political turbulence in China since the bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen Square prodemocracy protests in 1989....
Gu was accused of luring Heywood to a Chongqing hotel, getting him drunk, and then pouring cyanide into his mouth.
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"Chinese police official is charged in poisoning scandal" by Ian Johnson and Jonathan Ansfield | New York Times, September 06, 2012
BEIJING — The charges against Wang Lijun, the former police chief and vice mayor of Chongqing, stemmed from his flight in February to the US Consulate in Chengdu, where he told US diplomats that Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, had killed a British businessman, Neil Heywood....
Separately, four top police officials who served under Wang were convicted of aiding the cover-up, although courtroom proceedings raised more questions than they answered.
Just like my newspaper.
Wednesday’s announcement is part of a slow but steady mopping-up operation....
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Time to mop up this post:
"Hillary Clinton arrives in China to barrage of criticism" by Jane Perlez and Steven Lee Myers | NY Times Syndication, September 05, 2012
BEIJING — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in China Tuesday night to a barrage of unusually harsh coverage in China’s official news media over what they called US meddling in territorial disputes in the region — and then a strikingly warm welcome from the country’s foreign minister.
Right, the two-faced Chinese, yup.
Man, am I ever sick of this imperial slop shoveled off as news.
The contrasting receptions — both official, though in different ways — underscored a complicated and often fraught relationship that both countries nevertheless appear intent to maintain despite serious differences over foreign policy, trade, and human rights....
A certain amount of pleasantries and parrying is not unusual during high-level visits like Clinton’s, but articles and editorials in China’s official media, as well as comments by Chinese analysts, contained unusual bite Tuesday, including personal criticism of Clinton.
Hey, she brings it on herself. Have you seen some of the comments she makes? Outrageous is a kind description.
The sharpness stemmed from tensions over China’s increasingly assertive claims in maritime disputes with other nations in the region, and it echoed a feeling shared by many in both countries that the United States and China are locked in a competition for dominance in the region and beyond....
The basis for WWIII.
Cui bono?
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"Playboy death new wrinkle in China’s power shuffle" by Alexa Olesen | Associated Press, September 05, 2012
BEIJING — A lurid new scandal....
Right up the AmeriKan media's alley -- just as the Chinese are trying to leave them behind.
an accident which initially garnered only minimal coverage in China’s state media....
The media blackout underscores official fears that the public will be outraged by another instance of excess and recklessness among China’s power elites.
The embarrassing new wrinkle follows the murder trial last month of a top leader’s wife who poisoned her British business associate last year. Both scandals have become bargaining chips in the jockeying for power ahead of a major leadership reshuffle this fall....
The report said Ling was half-naked when the crash occurred and his two passengers were naked or half-dressed, suggesting they had been involved in some kind of high-speed sex game.
???????? That looks like a cover story to me.
Several other news outlets later cited additional unnamed officials as corroborating details. However, efforts to get officials to publicly confirm the report were unsuccessful....
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"Chinese leader’s absence a mystery" by Ian Johnson | New York Times, September 11, 2012
BEIJING — Speculation intensified Monday over the whereabouts of China’s presumptive next president, Xi Jinping, who has been missing from public view in recent days as the country prepares for a crucial leadership change.
Last week, Xi canceled meetings with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the prime minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong. On Monday, he did not show up at a meeting with the Danish prime minister.
While Chinese leaders often do not appear in public for long periods, canceling meetings with foreign dignitaries at the last minute is unusual. Adding to the uncertainty is the absence of an official statement of any kind, with observers talking about a bad back or even a mild heart attack.
‘‘There’s every sort of crazy rumor about Xi’s health,’’ said a senior Chinese journalist, who asked not to be identified because of sensitivity surrounding the case. ‘‘But no one is saying anything.’’
The speculation adds another wrinkle to the less-than-smooth transition from the departing president, Hu Jintao, to Xi. Earlier this year, a senior Communist leader, Bo Xilai, vanished from view after his wife was charged with murdering a British businessman. Earlier this month, another senior official was unexpectedly demoted after a scandal surrounding his son.
And no date has been set for the 18th Party Congress, when the transition is supposed to take place.
The consensus is that it will happen next month, but no announcement has been made. The last congress was also held in October; its dates had been made public in August.
Related: China leaders gather to plan power shift
‘’These are not signs that everything is going well,’’ said Bo Zhiyue, a political science professor at the National University of Singapore.
China’s political system has long been a black box, but its secrecy has begun to seem more anachronistic as the country has become one of the world’s biggest economic, political, and military powers....
I can certainly subscribe to that feeling regarding my government!
Some of the rumors have it that Xi hurt his back swimming or playing soccer; these were given credence by reports from foreign diplomats who say they were told that his bad back had caused him to cancel the meetings with Clinton and Lee.
One well-connected political analyst in Beijing said he was told by party officials that the rumors of skulduggery were wrong....
On Monday, the situation grew odder. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied that the meeting between Xi and the Danish prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, had been scheduled. Last week, however, the ministry had invited the foreign press for a photo opportunity with the two leaders.
‘’We have told everybody everything,’’ Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said, according to the Associated Press.
Either AP screwed up the translation or we have hyperbolic lying.
Told everybody everything?
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"China VP’s absence raises succession questions" by Christopher Bodeen | Associated Press, September 13, 2012
BEIJING — For China’s Communist Party, it should be easy to quash all that speculation — from plausible to outlandish — about the unexplained absence of the country’s next leader. Just trot him out in public to show that he is hale and hearty.
Yet, as Xi Jinping’s absence carried into an 11th day Wednesday, party officials were saying nothing. Their silence only added to the rumors’ momentum and raised an important question: What happens to China’s once-a-decade leadership transition if the 59-year-old is unable to assume the mantle of power as planned later this fall?
Xi, China’s vice president, has not been seen in public since Sept. 1. He has missed planned meetings with US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other dignitaries.
The most plausible speculation centers on some sort of health crisis, ranging from a muscle pull to a stroke or a heart attack. But some of the more far-fetched rumors have imagined him the victim of an assassination attempt or a political feud with outgoing President Hu Jintao.
Given the track record of AmeriKa's print media one is inclined to dismiss the plausible and believe in the far-fetched.
The latest claim, appearing Wednesday on Hong Kong’s iSun Affairs website and sourced to an unidentified relative of Xi’s, said he was merely busy preparing for the political transition and accompanying political reforms.
It said his health was fine.
Given the runaway speculation, the silent approach is ‘‘even more reckless than controlling the message,’’ allowing the rumor mill to turn faster and faster, said Kellee Tsai, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University.
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"Rumors swirl over China’s absent VP" Associated Press, September 14, 2012
BEIJING — New rumors about health problems facing China’s leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping swirled Thursday as the government continued to stonewall on commenting on his condition or whereabouts 12 days after he dropped from sight....
Early rumors said Xi, 59, threw his back out swimming or pulled a muscle playing football. As the days passed, the speculation escalated to more serious conditions, including a heart attack, stroke, or emergency surgery.
And on Thursday, Hong Kong’s Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said a small cancerous growth had been discovered on Xi’s liver on Sept. 2 and that he had undergone surgery to remove it. The center said he was expected to reappear in public next week.
Related(?): Venezuelan President Chavez Hints U.S. Could Be Behind Cancers Affecting South American Leaders
And now we are doing it to South Asian leaders?
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Next Day Update:
Globe says there are many questions still unanswered, but not for me.
