Theater of the Absurd

It was quite the Chinese opera. The recently concluded trial of fallen princeling-politician Bo Xilai for bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power provided sex and scandal, allegations of an ill-gotten French villa and a hunk of rare African beast that the Bo family supposedly feasted on for a month. Via the hyperactive online feed of the Jinan Intermediate People’s Court, where Bo was being tried, an eager Chinese public got rare access to edited court proceedings.

The image fashioned by China’s government propagandists was of a model of courtroom transparency in which the 64-year-old former Politburo member was allowed to cross-examine witnesses and make an expansive closing statement asserting his innocence. None of this supposed legal orthodoxy, though, could take away from the salacious details that drew nearly 600,000 microblog followers to the five-day trial. Even Bo himself commented on the improbabilities of his legal drama: “The lowest type of television soap opera could not possess this kind of plot.”

(VIDEO: As Bo Xilai Goes to Trial, Disgraced Chinese Official Still Has His Fans)

That was a typical rhetorical flourish from an atypical Chinese leader who reveled in populist stagecraft even as his communist brethren withdrew behind the bamboo curtain. Yet Bo’s remark also contained one of the keenest insights of the entire judicial affair. State news agency Xinhua said Bo’s trial — not to mention the relative openness surrounding it in a nation more used to closed-door judicial farces — showed how serious the ruling Communist Party, now led by Xi Jinping, is about tackling official graft. But Bo’s comeuppance was not about a turning point in China’s long march to a society governed by rule of law. Nor was it a milestone victory in Xi’s signature antigraft campaign. Instead, this was pure political theater, courtesy of party leaders seemingly determined to discipline China’s most iconoclastic politician.

The saga of Bo, the son of a revolutionary who was purged last year while serving as party boss of the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing, makes even reality TV look unreal. Here are a couple of the more unlikely plot points. Last summer, while Bo sat in detention at an undisclosed location, his wife Gu Kailai was convicted of murdering a British business consultant with cyanide. Bo’s deputy, Wang Lijun, fled to a U.S. consulate in southwestern China before being jailed for defection, among other offenses. During his trial, Bo implied that romantic flickers between Wang and Gu went toward explaining the pair’s criminality and helped absolve him of their misdeeds. Part of the trial was devoted to ascertaining whether an incensed Bo had once punched Wang — or had merely slapped him.

(MORE: Trial of Disgraced Chinese Politician Concludes as Public Feasts on Details of His Alleged Excesses)

Either way, Bo was a Technicolor character in a nation of colorless leaders. That individualism, along with his arrogance in office and apparent penchant for locking up foes, almost certainly contributed to his demise. Yet the prosecution addressed none of the more serious allegations of Bo’s abuse of power, including the possibility that his criminality extended to his quest to enter the top ranks of the party leadership. There’s little doubt, even within China’s censored online public space, that the likely guilty verdict Bo will soon face has as much to do with a clash with other Chinese politicians as with a cleanup of the graft that blights the party. “In China, those who become targets of corruption investigations are usually determined by senior leaders,” wrote Chinese journalist Liu Yanwei in an online commentary. “How can the masses trust this kind of anticorruption campaign?”

Bo’s trial is a political triumph for the party, not a judicial one for the nation. The authorities have locked up a number of bloggers, social-media activists and journalists in recent weeks, the latest detentions in a summer of stifled dissent. Writing about Liu Hu, an investigative reporter picked up by police on questionable charges on Aug. 23 after airing allegations about official corruption on his personal microblog, He Bing, a law professor at China University of Political Science and Law, wrote online: “Liu’s case is much more important than Bo’s case. If Liu was accused of [the trumped-up] charges of ‘picking quarrels and provoking social disturbances,’ it means we have no freedom of speech.” Other independent voices silenced in recent days have been blamed for supposed crimes such as fabricating rumors and soliciting prostitutes. Unlike Bo, these individuals may never get a chance to even begin defending themselves in court.

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