Chapter 01 Xi Jinping’s Path to Rise (4)

In the afternoon of June 23, 2007 at the Beijing West Hotel, more than 400 members and alternate members of the CCP Central Committee received “recommendation ballots” to vote for their preferred members of the Politburo to be recommended to the Standing Committee. The results were announced at 4:30 p.m. Among the 420 people who voted, Xi Jinping, as the candidate for general secretary got 211 votes, while Li Keqiang got 209 votes, making Xi Jinping the winner. Hu Jintao’s face became white when he learned the results and he kept sitting for a long time without standing up while Jiang Zemin came over to shake hands with Xi Jinping with joy. Hu Jintao saw Liu Yandong extending the V gesture to Xi Jinping. Greatly surprised, he understood what was the reason and he turned his head away from them and hurriedly left the meeting.

Xi Jinping had ambitions to become the central CCP leader and so had Bo Xilai. Jiang Zemin considered promoting both of them to the central. Bo Xilai was not willing to end up only a “Southwest King” (Chongqing municipal party secretary). After 2007, Chongqing Bo Xilai was engaged in “singing red and fighting black”—Singing Red is singing evolutional songs and creating the resurrection of Mao Zedong’s cultural revolution. Fighting Black is arresting gang members. In three months, more than 100 task forces were set up to arrest more than 5,000 criminals. “Chongqing model” emerged in national public opinion, even the patriarch Kissinger, who opened U.S.- China relations, came to Chongqing to study.

In 2011, Bo Xilai intensified his activities in preparation for his election to the Standing Committee of the Central Committee at the 18th National Assembly in 2012 and ordered the chief of Chongqing Police Bureau Wang Lijun to step up his efforts to understand the movements of the central leadership and monitor their activities in order to formulate countermeasures to “join the Standing Committee”. The government’s surveillance minister, Ma Wen, noticed Wang Lijun’s activities and reported them to Hu Jintao. Hu Jintao understood that Bo Xilai struggled to become a member of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee. He saw Xi Jinping as a rival, step by step to compete for the general secretary position. Hu Jintao had been working on a strategy of sitting on a mountain and watching a tiger fight. He asked Ma Wen to continue monitoring the situation and not take any measures.

On February 6, 2012, Wang Lijun entered the U.S. consulate in Chengdu, where he was sent to Beijing in accordance with Ma’s plan to seek political asylum. The U.S. consulate sent him to Beijing. Wang Lijun and others related were convicted according to the law. Bo Xilai was also detained in custody during a meeting in Beijing. Bo Xilai was sentenced to life imprisonment in September 2013 and sent to Qincheng prison in November.