Skip to footer

China's leadership shakeup: Bo Xilai and 4 other names to watch

Five names to keep an eye on as China prepares for a once-in-a-decade leadership change.

5. Bo Xilai - 'most controversial'

  • By Peter Ford Staff writer

The most colorful and controversial politician in China, Bo Xilai has defied his contemporaries’ strategy of moving up by keeping their heads down.

Son of a revolutionary hero, putting him firmly in the “princeling” faction of the Communist Party, Mr. Bo has never hidden his ambition to reach the top. After running one of the up and coming cities on the east coast – Dalian – Bo served a spell as minister of Commerce before being sent to take charge of Chongqing, which boasts of being the largest city in the world.

There he grabbed national attention by launching a crackdown on mafia-style triad groups which led to the arrest and imprisonment of a number of senior party figures (and the execution of a former police chief). In another act of showmanship, he also made headlines with his campaign to restore Mao-era songs and ideology.

His lack of humility, however, has made him many enemies. Earlier this month one of his closest aides, the police chief who had run his anti-Mafia campaign, was taken into detention after apparently seeking asylum in a US consulate.  

That was a major blot on Bo’s copybook – and an indication that powerful rival forces are aiming at him by gunning for his adjutant.

Indeed, he was abruptly dismissed amid scandal March 15, ending his ambition of a top post.

Never in recent Chinese history has such a senior Communist Party leader fallen so dramatically and so publicly from grace. His removal was widely expected to complicate a key year of political transition in China.

5 of 5
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.