Bo Xilai reminded the world why he had once been considered China’s most charismatic politician by showing that he remains uncowed by the charges he is facing or by the political forces arrayed against him.
About halfway through Thursday’s morning session, prosecutors presented videotaped testimony of the former manager of a state-run company who had admitted to giving Bo, then mayor of Dalian, $180,000 in bribes in exchange for land and other auto-related transactions.
“I really saw the ugliness of a person who sold his soul,” Bo was allowed to say in response. He added, “He’s biting wildly like a mad dog.”
Under ordinarily accepted rules of evidence a defendant’s characterization of a witness’s testimony has no evidentiary value and would not be allowed. However, the judge of the Jinan court in which the trial is being held appeared to be surprisingly lax in letting Bo speak his mind without regard to rules of evidence or normal trial procedures.
Later, prosecutors read the testimony of Bo’s wife Gu Kailai in which she said she “noticed” anonymous deposits being made into a joint bank account shared with Bo.
“I think Gu Kailai’s testimony is very amusing and very laughable,” Bo is reported as saying in response.
Bo’s spirited denial of the evidence arrayed against him caught observers by surprise. Most had expected the trial to proceed according to a script in which virtually all the elements needed to establish Bo’s guilt would be contained in a signed confession, as had been the case in the trials of Gu and Bo’s former right-hand man Wang Lijun.
In fact, the prosecution was in possession of a confession in which Bo had admitted taking bribes. But at the trial Bo declared that he had only made the statements out of “opportunism and weakness” and under “mental strain.”
Adding to the impression that Bo was in fact being granted something like an open trial was the court’s release to the press of a detailed transcript of the day’s proceedings. Court officials also set up a press center in a hotel across the street from the court. A large-screen TV streamed the court’s microblog feed for the assembled press, comprising a large number of foreign journalists and a few reporters for Chinese state media.
The surprising degree of apparent spontaneity in Bo’s testimony and statements together with a hitherto-unknown degree of official transparency prompted a wide variety of reactions from the media and the public. The most cynical speculated that Bo had struck a secret deal in which he would be allowed some outbursts in exchange for accepting a prison sentence.
Bo’s eldest son Li Wangzhi who had been in attendance released a statement thanking the party central authorities and the court “for giving the defendant greater rights to a defense and freedom than he had expected, allowing my father to speak his true mind.” Li added that his father has “stood by his own ideas” through 500-day investigation pursued by over 300.
Others applauded the trial as “the most open trial of its kind, certainly the most open among the ones we have seen recently” in which Bo “seems to be speaking his mind, judging from his speech and the words he used.”
But suspicion remained that the party leadership was putting on a show of spontaneity and transparency in an effort to convince the world that the rule of law prevails in China. Even Bo’s defiance, some argued, was part of a piece of scripted political theater.
Bo refused to give an inch, however. He denied any knowledge of a villa on the French Riviera Gu had bought in 2000 with $3.2 million from Xu Ming, a tycoon long linked to the Bo family. He also denied knowledge of a business venture by Xu and Gu to import hot-air balloons into China, a $16,000 Africa trip by son, Bo Guagua and friends, an $18,000 toy Xu had bought for Guagua, or the $50,000 Xu paid to clear Guagua’s credit card debt.
Gu was “a person of culture and taste, a modern intellectual woman,” with whom he didn’t discuss money matters, Bo explained.
Regardless of Bo’s apparent spontaneity or the possibility of official complicity thereto, the trial’s surprise drama is unlikely to change the ultimate verdict to be rendered after the second day of trial Friday. However, the sentence may be lightened somewhat if Bo’s theatrics appear to find favor with China’s citizens, many of whom long to return to the era of basic communist values with which Bo had come to be identified before his precipitous fall last April.
