Bo Xilai vs The Deng Family: Why This Political Marriage Was So Dangerous

This Mother's Day, Bo Guagua posted on the social media platform X to proclaim his mother's innocence. If you don't know who Bo Guagua is, reading this post might move you emotionally. This is a son missing his mother behind bars. However, this very human sentiment, when it comes to Bo Guagua, appears particularly jarring because the motherly love Bo Guagua received was not heavy with affection, but drenched in blood. Before we talk about him, I want to ask everyone a question first. If a child grows up living in a mansion, studies at Harvard, goes to Oxford and takes private jets to travel to Africa and everything he has is bought at the cost of other people's lives, does this child have the right to cry? Hello everyone, I'm Chen Waiyu. Is Bo Guagua's longing for his mother really worthy of sympathy? Today, we're going to talk about three things. First, what kind of mother is Gu Kailai? What did she do for her son, and what did she do to others? Second, from Dalian to Chongqing, whose corpses did Bo Xilai step over to climb to the top? Third, the 2012 storm, the Wang Lijun incident, was just the trigger. What is the real truth behind it? Let's start with that post. On the X platform, Guagua posted an old photo with his parents. He said, It's been 14 years since we last spoke. Every day you've been absent has made the sense of injustice and regret even heavier. He also said that everything you have endured has already surpassed what Grandpa Haimei went through and is now approaching what Grandpa Baimei experienced. They both walked their own long roads to rehabilitation. Let this world continue to make its fickle judgments. Grandpa Haimei is his maternal grandfather, Gu Jingsheng, a PLA major general imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution. Grandpa Baimei is his paternal grandfather, Bo Yibo, a CCP immortal toppled then rehabilitated during the Cultural Revolution. The underlying message of this statement is that his ancestors were wronged for political reasons but were later rehabilitated. Therefore, his mother, too, was wronged and will eventually be vindicated. In his eyes, his mother is a victim who was unjustly convicted. It's unclear whether he is simply unaware or if he doesn't believe at all that his mother is actually an executioner with blood on her hands. So what kind of woman is Gu Kailai? What did she do that led her to walk through those iron gates, never to come out again? Let's first talk about Gu Kailai, the mother whom Bo Guagua constantly remembers and proclaims as wronged year after year. What kind of person is she, really? Gu Kailai's background is anything but ordinary. Her father, Gu Jingsheng, was a major general in the PLA and participated in the December 9th Movement. A veteran communist revolutionary, Gu Kailai was also accomplished. In 1978, she entered law at Peking University, among the first students after reform and opening up. She later founded the Beijing Kailai Law Firm as a professional lawyer. Looking at this resume, she is a woman of exceptional talent. Bo Jilai once publicly praised his wife, saying, My wife, Gu Kailai, is among the first group of lawyers in China. Not only is she well-versed in legal knowledge, but she is also highly knowledgeable about international culture. Her legal expertise has been a great help to me in the anti-crime campaigns. Speaking of this, he also expressed special gratitude to his wife, saying that Gu Kailai gave up her thriving law firm at the height of its success for the sake of his political career, choosing to focus on the family instead. He was deeply moved by this and spoke about it with great fondness. But what many people may not know is where Gu Kailai devoted all her energy and time after her sudden withdrawal. First, she managed various forms of grey area wealth for the state. Second, she focused on raising their son, Bo Guagua. Third, she followed Bo Jilai in engaging in some even darker activities, which we will discuss shortly. As a mother, Gu Kailai's love for Bo Guagua was genuine. In 1999, because Bo Jilai had an affair, Gu Kailai, in a fit of anger, took her son and left for the UK, personally accompanying him to study. She tutored her son in English in a small seaside apartment in England, changing residences every few days. Bo Guagua later recalled that once he walked into a room that was both small and dark. He blurted out, Isn't this a slum? His mother didn't say a word. Many years later, when he talked about this detail, he did so with gratitude. But this child never once thought to ask, Six years of tuition at Harrow School, living expenses at Oxford University, a vacation villa in Nice, France, and private jet trips in Africa. All of this was paid for, bit by bit, in cash by the Dalian businessman Xu Ming. And the reason Xu Ming was willing to foot the bill was because Bo Jilai used his power to secure countless business benefits for Xu's shied group. And, of course, also brought substantial profits to the country. The court documents clearly state that from 2004 until the case was uncovered, Xu Ming paid for 76 flights for Bo Guagua and Gu Jilai, totaling over 3.2 million RMB. And when combined with accommodation and travel expenses, the total exceeded 4 million. In 2011, when Bo Guagua travelled to Africa, Xu Ming paid $80,000 in one go for a private jet from Dubai to Kilimanjaro. Gu Jilai personally stated in court that the luxurious villa she bought in France was intended to be left to Bo Guagua in the future to provide him with a stable income. For her son, she went to great lengths to accumulate wealth. For her son, she ultimately even killed someone with her own hands. In November 2011, the British businessman Neil Heywood had a financial dispute with Gu Jilai and issued threats. Gu Jilai believed that he posed a threat to Bo Guagua's personal safety. So she personally arranged for Neil Heywood's life to be ended with cyanide poison in a hotel room in Chongqing. This is the mother whom Bo Guagua described as having suffered injustice and being wrongfully imprisoned. And there is another matter, even darker than killing Heywood. This is the secret that Bo Jilai and Gu Kailai least wanted anyone to know and it is also the real reason why they could never be fully prosecuted in court. Bo Jilai, son of Bo Yibo and a prominent red princeling, was the CCP's most charismatic and star-like politician. His presence immediately signaled he was no ordinary man. He truly was extraordinary, extraordinarily ruthless and extremely cunning. In 1999, when Jiang Zemin launched a comprehensive crackdown on CSAs, Bo Jilai, who was then the mayor of Dalian, saw this as a golden opportunity for promotion. In August 1999, Jiang Zemin visited Liaoning and in front of Bo Jilai said you need to show toughness in dealing with only then will you have the capital to rise. Bo Jilai understood exactly what this meant. He immediately began large-scale construction in Dalian, expanding prisons and Zhang'an centers and detained a large number of Faxian practitioners. He gave a direct order to the police, go after them as if you want them dead. Even more terrifyingly, investigations by the Epoch Times show that under Bo Jilai, Dalian pioneered the live harvesting of park practitioners' organs. So-called live organ harvesting means removing organs from living people who are still breathing, without anesthesia, and selling them for profit. Sun Lutao, a Yaxha's practitioner who was once detained at the Dalian detention center, personally heard from a fellow inmate in the same cell who saw the scene through a window. That inmate said, it turns out that killing a person is just like slaughtering a pig and taking out a person's liver and lungs is just like taking out the organs of an animal. This is not a movie plot. Someone actually witnessed it with their own eyes. And Gu Kailai, whom Bo Guagua saw as a loving mother, played the role of the mastermind behind all of this. She was in charge of financial management, overseas organ trade contacts, and laundering the money. Some investigative reports even indicate that she partnered with the British businessman Neil Haywood to open a company in the UK. This company specialized in selling organs and corpses to overseas markets. A complete corpse could sell for US$1 million on the international market, while a corpse with organs removed could fetch US$800,000. This is the true source of the enormous wealth accumulated by the Bo Xilai couple. All of it built on the blood of Falun Gong practitioners. Bo Xilai rose from mayor of Dalian to governor of Liaoning province, then entered the Ministry of Commerce, and was finally transferred to Chongqing as a member of the Politburo, just one step away from the highest echelons of power. As everyone knows, the charges the Chinese Communist Party brought against Bo Xilai in court were bribery, embezzlement, and abuse of power. The issue of live organ harvesting was not mentioned at all. Not a single word. Because that is a forbidden zone that the entire CCP system dares not touch. Today is May 13th, World Falun Dafa Day, and to this day, the crimes of persecuting Falun Gong practitioners and live organ harvesting have yet to be redressed. Where did Bo Guagua find the courage to plead for his mother, whose hands are stained with the blood of Falun Gong practitioners? However, even without the issue of live organ harvesting, Bo Xilai was destined never to reach the highest position, because even before he arrived in Chongqing, five knives had already been quietly placed at his throat. After arriving in Chongqing, Bo Xilai launched his most famous campaign, singing red songs and cracking down on the underworld. On the surface, it seemed like a crackdown on crime and evil, which the public applauded, and public security in Chongqing did improve somewhat. But in reality, a large number of Chongqing entrepreneurs were labeled as gangsters, their assets were forcibly confiscated, and they were thrown into prison. Many of those so-called criminal gangs were simply wealthy individuals with businesses. They were just ordinary businessmen who got in Bo Xilai's way. The singing red songs campaign was even more chilling. Bo Xilai demanded that all government officials, students and citizens in Chongqing sing revolutionary songs and read Maoist books, reviving the kind of ideological mobilization used during the Mao era in an attempt to create a new Chongqing where he called all the shots. Many people described the atmosphere in Chongqing during that period as if the Cultural Revolution had returned. Looking back now, if he had come to power, he would have started even earlier than Xi Jinping. The reformists within the party had long seen through Bo Xilai's ambitions, and they also recognized that his approach was an open challenge to Deng Xiaoping's reformist path. This was also one of the root causes of his eventual downfall. In February 2012, Wang Lijun, the chief of Chongqing's Public Security Bureau, suddenly disguised himself and fled to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu. From that moment, Bo Xilai's political career began its countdown. Many people think that Bo Xilai's downfall was solely because of Wang Lijun's defection. But things weren't that simple. Wang Lijun's defection was just the final match that lit the fuse. The real explosives had been planted many years earlier. The ex-account New Heights argues Bo Xilai's downfall was primarily a political line struggle. His Singing Red campaign signaled a return to Maoism, which threatened the reformist camp. The Deng family, the Wen family, and other core forces among the princelings openly opposed Bo Xilai's entry into the Politburo Standing Committee at the 18th Party Congress. He had no chance of passing that hurdle long before. Second, Bo's alliance with the Chen family ignited the Deng family's fury. Around 2010, Bo began dating Chen Xiaodan, the granddaughter of Chen Yun, which caused a huge stir among the princelings. You should know that historically, Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yun were open arch enemies. The two were like fire and water, to the extent that they were unwilling to appear at the same meeting together. So if the Bo and Chen families succeeded in forming a marriage alliance, what would that mean for the Deng family? It would be a strategic nightmare, and this was remembered even more deeply. Thirdly, he offended Wen Jiabao. Bo Xilai once publicly refused to allow the company of Wen Jiabao's son to carry out large-scale mergers and acquisitions in Chongqing, and even ruined Wen's business interests. Grievances within the party have never been just about ideological lines. They are also a naked struggle for interests. Fourth, Zeng Qinghong was furious and put up a strong fight, while Jiang Zemin made concessions. In the personnel arrangements for the 18th Party Congress, under pressure from various sides, Zeng Qinghong ultimately persuaded Jiang Zemin to abandon his support for Bo Xilai, and instead accept Xi Jinping. This personnel switch directly rewrote the landscape of the 18th Party Congress. Fifth, Wang Lijun had already been turned. His defection was not a momentary impulse. When he ran into the U.S. consulate, he had already been in contact with the Huwen faction as early as around 2010. The materials he brought, including evidence of Gu Kailai's murder of Neil Heywood, and even deeper crimes committed by Bo Xilai, provided Bo Xilai's political enemies with the perfect opportunity to direct the course of events. In September 2013, Bo Xilai was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Jinan Intermediate People's Court on charges of bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power. In the official court proceedings, not a single word was mentioned about his crimes related to organ harvesting. Having finished talking about Bo's parents, let's finally come back to talk about Bo Guagua himself. When Guagua was nine years old, he once wrote a poem for his father. The poem went like this. Ten bowls of rice, the child wants to read, hoping there will be no more separation, longing to know when father will return. As for the true meaning behind Guagua's poem, it is saying that it is already late, and there is no father in the courtyard. You should know, there is a child who has been waiting for you to come home. For a nine-year-old child to write such lines to his father, we cannot deny that this is a genuine expression of a child's feelings. Bo Guagua truly experienced absence from a young age. He was mostly raised by his maternal grandparents, as his father was busy with his own pursuits and his mother was occupied with various affairs. Later, she even took him to the UK, a child growing up in loneliness, longing for his father's presence. This is a genuine emotion. But has Bo Guagua ever thought about those Chongqing entrepreneurs who were thrown into black jails by Bo Xilai? Their children are also waiting for their fathers to come home, and those Falun Gong practitioners in Dalian who had their organs forcibly harvested. Their children were left waiting for nothing but a mutilated corpse. Perhaps Bo Guagua's tears are real, but he has never asked himself how many families and children were deprived of their own mothers' and fathers' love so that he could have the motherly love he speaks of. Your Harris School, your Oxford, your Harvard, your private jet in Africa, your villa in Cannes. Where did all of this come from? Perhaps Bo Guagua has never thought about it, because he grew up in a greenhouse where he never needed to know these things. Gu Xilai gave this child the very best material conditions. Even when it came to murder, she claimed it was because someone had threatened Bo Guagua's safety. But this is not motherly love. It is a kind of possession without boundaries or sense of right and wrong, a self-indulgence that uses the child's name as an excuse for her actions. And Bo Guagua, a third-generation red aristocrat, went from Harris School to Harvard, flying by private jet from Africa to Canada. The only suffering he understands is his own. He is blind to the suffering of others. A child raised and nourished by wrongdoing ultimately becomes the one to cry injustice for that wrongdoing. Now, looking at Bo Guagua's Mother's Day post, doesn't it feel incredibly ironic?