Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai

Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai are a Chinese politician and lawyer who were at the center of one of China’s greatest political scandals.

Both Bo and Gu came from prominent Chinese Communist Party (CCP) families and thus were part of the generation of “princelings” who had succeeded their parents as China’s elite. Bo’s father was Bo Yibo, one of the “Eight Immortals” who oversaw China’s reform and modernization efforts in the 1980s and ’90s under Deng Xiaoping. Gu’s father was Gu Jingsheng, a former general and CCP bureaucrat. Both Bo Yibo and Gu Jingsheng fell from favor during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), and because of their family connections, Bo Xilai spent five years in reeducation classes and physical labor and Gu Kailai worked in a butcher’s shop.

After the Cultural Revolution, Bo entered Peking University and earned a bachelor’s degree in history in 1981. He then received a master’s degree in journalism from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. About the same time, Gu entered Peking University and received a law degree and later a master’s in international politics.

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In 1984 Bo began his government career in Liaoning province as CCP secretary of Jin county in the Jinzhou district of Dalian. He became executive vice-mayor of Dalian in 1989 and mayor of the city in 1992; in the latter post he was successful in increasing foreign investment and tourism. From 1999 to 2000 he was also CCP secretary of Dalian. In 2001 he became governor of Liaoning. In 2004 he was appointed minister of commerce, which brought him international attention for his key role in China’s business and trade.

Gu married Bo in 1986 and shortly thereafter founded her own law firm, Kailai. She worked on several high-profile cases, including a civil suit brought in the United States against several Dalian-based companies, and she wrote two best-selling books about her work.

In 2007, at the 17th Party Congress, Bo was appointed to the Political Bureau and became party secretary of Chongqing city. Bo’s policies became known as the “Chongqing model” and included a crackdown on organized crime, a revival of Maoist culture, and social assistance for poor families and rural workers who migrated to the city. Under Bo’s rule Chongqing’s gross domestic product increased at an annual average rate of 15.8 percent. Despite allegations against Bo and Gu of corruption and abuse of power, Bo was seen as a likely candidate to succeed President Hu Jintao as China’s leader.

On November 15, 2011, Neil Heywood, a British businessman who had dealt with Bo and Gu for 15 years, was found dead in a hotel room in Chongqing. The death was immediately ascribed to “excessive alcohol consumption,” but on February 6, 2012, former Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun, whom Bo had removed from his post four days earlier, sought asylum at the U.S. consulate in Chengdu. There he claimed that Gu had poisoned Heywood. Wang left the consulate the next day in the custody of state security officers. Bo was removed from his post as Chongqing party secretary on March 15 and from all other CCP posts the following month. He was placed under investigation for corruption and “serious discipline violations.” On July 26 Gu and Zhang Xiaojun, an employee of Bo, were charged with Heywood’s murder. At the conclusion of their trial, on August 20, Gu received a suspended death sentence and Zhang received a nine-year prison sentence. In a trial one month later Wang Lijun was convicted of defection and other crimes and sentenced to a 15-year prison term.

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Meanwhile, in late September 2012 Bo was expelled from the CCP, and a month later his standing as a delegate to the National People’s Congress was revoked—the latter of which actions removed his immunity from prosecution. After an official investigation, he was indicted on several counts of corruption and misconduct in July 2013. His trial took place on August 22–26 in Jinan, Shandong province, and on September 22 he was convicted on all counts and sentenced to life imprisonment and forfeiture of his property.