Amid a surreal degree of media focus on whether Bo Guagua did or did not drive a red Ferrari for his dinner date with Maryanne Huntsman, Hong Kong gossip magazine Yazhou Zhoukan claims that the young man sexually harassed one of the two daughters of the US Ambassador at the dinner.
A recent New York Times article cast serious doubt over the red Ferrari incident that has already passed into urban legend through the accounts of various people who were present that evening, including Maryanne and Abby Huntsman Livingston, a European male friend of Guagua and the expat woman who arranged the dinner to bring the young people together at the suggestion of Ambassador Jon Huntsman who had met young Bo earlier and been deeply impressed. Their accounts seem to contradict the account published last November in the Wall Street Journal. They recall Guagua being chauffeured to the dinner in a black Audi sedan, their accounts seem to suggest.
However, after the dinner at Nobu Bo was driving a red sports car at a very high speed as he, his European friend and Maryanne Huntsman proceeded to a bar, at least according to Maryanne’s recollection.
Now that evening has taken on another dimension with the allegation that Bo made unwelcome sexual advances to one of the Huntsman girls. His actions bordered on harassment, claims the magazine, angering Ambassador Huntsman and nearly setting off a diplomatic crisis. The incident is said to have been widely discussed in Beijing political circles.
Even if true the rumor adds no new dimension to the image Bo Guagua had built up during his days in England at Harrow and Oxford and in the US at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government as a party animal frequently photographed in varying states of dishevelment in the company of very undemure western women. However, it does suggest that young Bo, 25, may have been even less circumspect about his impact on the world around him.
At least indirectly Bo Guagua’s free-spending and freewheeling life of luxury may have contributed to the downfall of his father Bo Xilai, the former party chief of Chongqing municipality who has been stripped of all his official party posts and is currently under house arrest on charges of “severe disciplinary violations”. His wife Gu Kailai is also under arrest while the central government decides whether she had a hand in the poisoning death of British business consultant Neil Heywood.
Last week Bo Guagua tried to discredit rumors of his lavish lifestyle by sending an email to the Harvard Crimson denying that he had ever driven a red Ferrari. That led to an investigative piece in the New York Times showing that he had been ticketed three times in Massachusetts while driving a black Porsche.
The lavish spending suggested by Guagua’s expensive overseas education, nightlife exploits and lavish lifestyle had raised questions as to how they could have been financed by the modest salary of even a high-level Communist Party official. That suspicion of shady financial dealings have made it easier for Beijing to defuse any potential unrest that may have been produced by the ousting of an official who had won a large populist following with his much-publicized crusade against organized crime and official corruption.
