2012-04-11

Bo Xilai officially out; wife under investigation; PLA attacks reform efforts

The Bo Xilai saga is fading into the background and reform is the topic of debate.
Bo ousted, wife in murder probe
The Communist Party has expelled Bo Xilai , the former high-flying Chongqing party boss, from its top ranks and launched a police investigation centred on his wife, Gu Kailai , in connection with the murder of Neil Heywood, a British citizen who worked closely with Gu and her son.

In a spectacular fall from grace that has rocked the nation's leadership succession, Bo has been stripped of his position as a member of the Central Committee and the Politburo.
This murder investigation is the key event that drove Wang Lijun to seek asylum.

Push to privatise SOEs 'a foreign plot'
The head of China's state-owned military and civilian aviation company said the privatisation of state-owned enterprises was part of a foreign conspiracy to shake the foundations of the Communist Party.

He warned the PLA would be the next target once SOEs were privatised.
The military isn't going to call Communist Party members traitors, but make no mistake, there is no foreign plot against Chinese SOEs outside of the protectionism we are seeing in all countries, against all other. The target of their rhetoric is interal:
"When the state-owned economy has collapsed, the enemies will then seek the army's collapse. Privatising the economy and taking away the party's control of the army by nationalising the military are conspiracies by international enemies to shake the base of the ruling party."
This is a very accurate statement. The Party controls the SOEs, which gives them economic control of the nation, while control of the military assures political control. Nationalizing the military doesn't necessarily follow from privatizing SOEs (and even if it does, that transition would probably take several decades or more), but once economic control is relinquished, military control is probably next.

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