HONG KONG: A rising star is ejected from China’s Politburo and faces trial for violations of Communist Party discipline. His wife is in custody, suspected of murdering a British national.
So much for an orderly transition of power.
Just weeks ago, the pending retirement of Chinese president and Communist Party Chief Hu Jintao to the younger generation headed by anointed leader to be Xi Jinping had appeared headed for a quiet repeat of 2002.
That year, Hu took the reins from Jiang Zemin in what was hailed as the first peaceful transition of power in the Chinese Communist Party’s history. The party itself believed it had finally come up with a model for orderly and structured leadership handovers.
No longer. The 2002 transition increasingly looks to be the exception. The ouster of charismatic but controversial former Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai, and the detention of his wife Gu Kailai in connection with the murder of Briton Neil Heywood, conjures images more akin to the sinister and sometimes deadly power politics under Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping than to peaceful succession.
Between the two of them, Mao and Deng abandoned five chosen successors who were shoved aside or died in prison, under house arrest or in strange circumstances. Many other senior leaders around them were purged. (Reuters)
Mao ousted his first successor, Liu Shaoqi, during the Cultural Revolution in 1969 and Liu later died in prison. Mao’s second, Lin Biao, died in a mysterious plane crash in 1971. He was tried posthumously for treason after what China said was an abortive coup attempt.