China police chief sought asylum in US, says Chinese media
Wang Lijun, a former police chief now implicated in a scandal involving the poisoning of a British businessman, fled to a nearby US Consulate to request asylum, according to Chinese state media.
China's Chongqing Municipality Communist Party Secretary Bo Xilai (l.) and Deputy Mayor of Chongqing Wang Lijun (r.) sing the national anthem during a session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference of the Chongqing Municipal Committee, in Chongqing municipality in this January 2012 file photo.
Stringer/Reuters/File
Beijing
Hours after she poisoned a British businessman, Gu Kailai reached out to a trusted ally: Wang Lijun. Gu was the wife of Bo Xilai, the Communist Party boss in the inland Chinese megalopolis of Chongqing; Wang was Bo's chief of police and longtime collaborator.
According to an account released Wednesday by the government's Xinhua News Agency, when a panicked Gu turned to Wang for assistance following the murder, Wang helped her cover up the crime.
Within weeks, his relations with Gu became strained. He approached "the Chongqing party committee's main responsible person at the time" — an apparent reference to Bo himself — to tell him about the murder. For that, Wang "received an angry rebuke and was boxed in the ears," Xinhua said.
Only then, according to the account, did Wang flee to the U.S. Consulate in nearby Chengdu and request asylum from American diplomats.
Wang's flight in February set off the seamiest political scandal China has seen in decades. The fallout included an end to Bo's career as a rising star in party politics, his wife's conviction for murder, and serious complications for an insular Chinese leadership attempting to transfer power to a new generation this fall.
Page 1 of 4
