Though he looked tired, his eyes puffy, Bo exuded his signature self-confidence and charm. He smiled often as he held court in a room crowded with journalists asking pointed questions.
Raising his palm as if taking an oath, Bo deflected questions about whether he was jockeying for a top spot in China's political transfer of power, then under way. He blasted reports that suggested his then-24-year-old son led a playboy lifestyle, accusing his critics of “pouring filth” on his family.
Bo insisted his true concern was China's rich-poor gap. “If only a few people are rich, then we are capitalists. We have failed.”
Those were his last remarks in public.
Several days later, on March 14, 2012, then-outgoing Premier Wen Jiabao criticized Bo—without naming him—in a rare public rebuke of a party leader of that stature. Wen said Chongqing leaders “must seriously reflect on the Wang Lijun incident and learn lessons from it.” Wen also took a swipe at Bo's Maoist reputation, saying China must guard against regressing to one of its most violent periods.
The next day, Bo was dismissed as Chongqing party boss.
At a labor camp in Chongqing, inmates cheered at the announcement on the evening news. “We all thought: He's finally getting what he deserves,” said Fang Hong, a forestry official who had been sent to the camp for a year for posting a scatological ditty online that mocked Bo. He spent that year making Christmas lights for export to Germany.
Fang's was no isolated case of extralegal abuse—dozens of people were locked up for various minor transgressions, said Fang, whose case was overturned by a court recently.
“It was a time of red terror,” he said in a recent interview. “The labor camps were overflowing with people.”
The murder allegations against Bo's wife emerged after his dismissal. She has been convicted of murder and given a suspended death sentence that may be reduced to life in prison.
Bo was stripped of further posts, including on the powerful Politburo. He now faces charges of interfering with the murder investigation, as well as bribery and embezzlement, in a trial in the city of Jinan.
Bo Guagua, the couple's son, said in a statement released to The New York Times that he has been denied contact with both parents for the past 18 months.
Bo Xilai's trial is expected to be a short affair with a predetermined outcome: guilt. Analysts note that in China's recent history of political purges, the fates of senior officials accused of corruption tend to be decided by backroom negotiations that have little to do with justice.
