Bo Xilai is a former Chinese politician. He came to prominence through his tenures as the mayor of Dalian and then the governor of Liaoning. From 2004 to 2007, he served as Minister of Commerce. Between 2007 and 2012, he served as a member of the Central Politburo and secretary of the Communist Party's Chongqing branch. On 22 September 2013, Bo was found guilty of corruption, stripped of all his assets, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Background
Bo Xilai was born on July 3, 1949 Beijing, China.Bo Xilai is the second son of late party veteran Bo Yibo (1908–2007), a Long March veteran who, like leader Deng Xiaoping, was one of the ‘Eight Immortals’. Because of his father, Bo is considered to be one of the elite group of ‘princelings’ (children of incum- bent, retired and late high-ranking party and government functionaries). He is a native of Dingxiang County in Shanxi Province.
Education
Bo Xilai worked in a factory in Beijing for five years before being admitted in 1977 to Beijing University. He graduated with a baccalaureate in world history, and in 1979 began studies at the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences where he received his masters degree in journalism in 1982. This specialty distinguishes him from the crowd of engineers who make up the political elite in China.
Career
After graduation he worked as a staff member in the research office of the CCPCC Secretariat and the CCPCC General Office. In 1985 he was transferred to Dalian City in Northeastern Liaoning Province. He spent almost 20 years in Liaoning, 16 of them in Dalian, where he first served as party secretary of the Dalian Economic and Technological Development Zone and party secretary of Jinzhou Prefecture, before becoming mayor of Dalian in 1993 and party secretary in 1999. The port city of Dalian is part of China’s northeastern industrial heartland and was a grey, polluted city when Bo Xilai took office. Petrochemical and fuel plants were the main culprits in the fouling of the air and waterways. Bo fought to implement stricter emission controls and to shut down the worst polluters. Since then Dalian has been among the cleanest cities in China. Bo made it a model location by attracting investment from South Korea and Japan. He wanted to make the city an international fashion and trade center. To this end, he started successful infrastructure and urban beautification projects. China’s first expressway, the Shenyang-Dalian Expressway, was built in the early 1990s. Since his term in Dalian, Bo has been viewed as a rising political star.
In 2001 Bo Xilai was chosen by then General Secretary Jiang Zemin as the new gover- nor of Liaoning Province and appointed deputy party secretary of Liaoning. Bo is said to be a follower of Jiang Zemin. Liaoning used to serve as an important industrial base under China’s planned economy, but slipped into the doldrums when China launched its economic reform and opening-up drive and gradually endorsed a market economy. As governor in the northeastern rust belt, which was marked by ailing state-owned heavy industry, Bo Xilai successfully courted foreign investors and campaigned for the central government’s strategy to invigorate the region. Meanwhile, Liaoning had developed into one of the most economically powerful provinces in China and had seen fast expansion in the equipment manufacturing business, characterized by machine tools and shipbuild- ing. Its GDP is estimated to have grown by a record 14.5 percent in 2007, and the province is the eighth in the country to have a GDP above one trillion yuan.
Achievements
Politics
Bo had joined the Communist Party in October 1980. In 2002 Bo Xilai was elected a member of the 16th CCPCC. At the 15th National Party Congress in 1997 he had failed to win enough votes to enter the Central Committee, even as an alternate member. He succeeded in joining the highly regarded committee only in 2002, and by February 2004, Bo Xilai was appointed Minister of Commerce, a post he held until December 2007. This super-ministry was formed in March 2003 from the State Economic and Trade Commission, responsible for the domestic economy, and the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (MOFTEC), as part of the restructuring of the State Council. Among his urgent duties as minister were the restructuring of domestic trade, drafting the first national antitrust law and supervising China’s compliance with WTO requirements. He had to deal with trade disputes between China and both the EU and the United States, and held negotiations with the EU on the issue of exports of China’s textile products. Bo is well known for his vigorous defence of China’s trade interests.
Connections
In 1966, at the start of the Cultural Revolution, Bo Yibo (the father of Bo Xilai) was labelled a ‘counterrevolutionary revisionist’ and imprisoned for 12 years. His wife Hu Ming was driven to her death as a result of persecution by Red Guards, and their children were jailed or sent to the countryside. Bo Xilai himself was imprisoned for five years.
Bo's first wife was Li Danyu, the daughter of former Beijing Party First Secretary Li Xuefeng. They wed in September 1976 and had a son, "Brendan" Li Wangzhi (李望知), the following year.
Bo married his second wife, Gu Kailai, in 1986. Gu was a prominent lawyer and founder of the Kailai law firm in Beijing. She was said to have overcome a trying childhood during nationwide strife and worked her way to become a well-regarded lawyer and prominent politician's wife. Bo and Gu have one son, Bo Kuangyi, who is better known as Bo Guagua. He attended Harrow School in the United Kingdom, and was later admitted to Balliol College, Oxford, where in 2006 he started studying for a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.