Chongqing still grappling with ‘pernicious legacy’ of Bo Xilai
Former party chief has negative influence on city five years after his downfall, according to corruption watchdog
Five years after the dramatic downfall of Chongqing’s former party chief, Bo Xilai, the city still has yet to rid itself of his “pernicious legacy”, the Communist Party’s top graft watchdog said.
The spectacular fall from grace of Bo, a rival to President Xi Jinping in the lead-up to the last leadership transition, was China’s biggest political scandal in decades.
Bo, along with other fallen “tigers” including former security tsar Zhou Yongkang, former Central Military Commission vice-chairmen Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou and former presidential aide Ling Jihua, was accused of involvement in “political conspiracies” by Xi in October. This signalled that power struggles – and not just corruption – led to their downfalls.
The charismatic princeling and former Politburo member was jailed for life in September 2013 for corruption. But as the next reshuffle of top leaders closes in, the reverberations of the political shake-up can still be felt in the southwestern city, where Bo ruled for more than four years, according to the party’s top graft busters.
During a two-month inspection that ended in early January, officers from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) found the “pernicious ideological legacy” left by Bo and his right-hand man, Wang Lijun, “had not been wiped out completely”, according to a statement on the agency’s website on Monday.
