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Beware the Waking Dragon
A tea company in Wande county of Jinan city, capital of East China\’s Shandong province, shared nearly a million yuan ($165,200) in year-end bonuses with its tea growers, on Jan 20, 2014.Some growers got about 200,000 yuan.Li Taishan Tea Co was established after thevillage piloted a land circulation project in 2003.
via Tea growers get big year-end bonus[1]- Chinadaily.com.cn.
BBC: “A Chinese court has found disgraced former top politician Bo Xilai guilty of bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power.
The former party chief of Chongqing was sentenced to life imprisonment, but has the right to appeal.
He had denied all the charges against him in a fiery defence at his trial.
Bo was removed from office last year amid a scandal which saw his wife convicted for the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood.
The verdict was handed down by the Intermediate People’s Court in Jinan, Shandong province.
Passing sentence the judge told Bo that he had damaged China’s national interests and the interests of its people, wrongfully using his position in power to receive bribes totalling 20 million Chinese Yuan ($3.2m; £2m).
He rejected Bo’s claims that his confession to the crimes was acquired through illegal means such as torture and interrogation, and said it therefore stood.
The BBC’s John Sudworth, outside the court, said that the judge completely demolished Bo’s defence arguments.
During Bo’s trial last month the court took the unprecedented step of releasing details about proceedings on its Weibo microblog.
The curtains appear to have finally dropped on Bo Xilai’s once-glittering Communist Party career.
Bo can appeal against the trial verdict and his life sentence, but it is highly improbable he could engineer a future in which he re-enters China’s political arena. He has been stripped of all political rights for life.
Of course, Bo can apply for release on parole after 10 years. Other convicted politicians were released from prison after serving only part of their original sentences. Chen Xitong, a former Politburo member, was released on medical parole after serving half of his original 16-year prison term.
However, Bo Xilai is 64-years-old. Even before his political downfall, he was moving towards the final chapter in his career. It is difficult to envision a scenario in which he can quickly revive his populist power base, even if he gains an early release from prison.
It is difficult to make predictions in the world of Chinese politics. Two years ago Bo appeared to be poised to move into Zhongnanhai, the government compound in Beijing were China’s top leaders reside.
Now, he will spend the foreseeable future inside a prison cell.
Bo was sentenced to life in prison on the bribery charges, 15 years for embezzlement and seven years for abuse of power – our correspondent says that he has been politically buried. In addition all his personal wealth has been confiscated.
He has 10 days to appeal against his sentence and conviction, but correspondents say that any such move is highly unlikely to be successful.
Although his trial was conducted under an unprecedented degree of openness for China, many analysts say that the guilty verdict was always a foregone conclusion – and many see the process against him as having a very strong political dimension.
Prosecutors had said that Bo accepted the bribes and embezzled public funds from Dalian, where he used to be mayor.
He was also accused of abusing his office by using his position to cover up for his wife Gu Kailai, convicted last year of murdering Neil Heywood in 2011.
In lengthy comments in court, he said he did not illegally obtain millions of dollars or cover up Mr Heywood’s killing.
He also dismissed the testimony of two key witnesses, describing his wife’s statement as “ridiculous” and his former police chief Wang Lijun’s testimony as “full of lies and fraud”.
via BBC News – Bo Xilai found guilty of corruption by Chinese court.
WSJ: “Many China watchers see the trial of Communist Party insider Bo Xilai as scripted and staged, unveiling flaws of a closed Chinese judicial system. Yet amid the criticism, some are seeing positive signs emerge from Jinan, the northeastern Chinese city in Shandong province where Mr. Bo is facing corruption charges, including allegations that he took bribes with the aid of his wife.
The following are opinions of legal experts who have been following the trial:
Many Western critics of the Bo trial are comparing it to the stage-managed show trials of China’s past, including Jiang Qing [the wife of Mao Zedong] and victims of the Cultural Revolution. But this criticism misses the point. The Bo trial is exactly 180 degrees different in nature. In the show trials of China’s past, the politics would drive the criminal prosecution. In other words, the target would fall out of favor politically and then be legally persecuted as a result. In this trial, we have the opposite: the criminal prosecution is driving the politics. A towering and influential figure is being prosecuted in spite of his political influence, and the trial is driven primarily by the criminal allegations against him. Instead of being accused of serious crimes because his political standing has collapsed, his political standing has collapsed because he has been accused of serious crimes. –Geoffrey Sant, adjunct professor at Fordham Law School and special counsel at Dorsey & Whitney LLP
Despite the degree of supervision provided for the trial, there are nevertheless grounds for opening up the administration of justice to the supervision of the people. We’ve seen that in China there are many cases and trials that are not open, that attendance is constrained. Yet leaders have shown that they are willing to open up this case—to a certain extent—to the media, creating the perception that they are moving toward creating a more accessible judicial system.
Leaders are going farther than they could have to make the trial available. It’s a show trial, but not all trials are for show in China. To the extent that openness reveals shortcomings of the judicial system and promotes civil liberties is a positive thing. –Lester Ross a Beijing-based attorney with U.S. law firm WilmerHale.”
via In Bo Xilai Trial, Some See Positive Signs for Legal System – China Real Time Report – WSJ.
continuously updated blog about China & India
continuously updated blog about China & India
continuously updated blog about China & India
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 