Public spotlight in China moves to Bo Xilai

CHINA: Gu Kailai’s murder conviction ends one of China’s most sensational cases in years and throws the spotlight onto her husband as the country’s leaders seek to call time on a major political scandal.

Bo Xilai was one of China’s most popular political leaders until the scandal over British businessman Neil Heywood’s death burst into the open earlier this year, ending his hopes of promotion in a power handover that starts this autumn.

On Monday his wife was convicted of poisoning Heywood in a hotel room in Chongqing, the southwestern megacity her husband ran, and given a suspended death sentence -- a punishment that many in China considered too lenient. China’s state-run media has presented Gu’s prosecution as evidence that nobody is above the law as the Communist party attempts to resolve the crisis before its once-in-a-decade leadership transition at a party congress this year.

But Chinese web users on Monday angrily denounced the decision to spare Gu execution, contrasting her fate with that of a vegetable seller sentenced to death in 2009 for the murder of two officials.

Analysts say it remains unclear whether people will accept the verdict in a case that critics say was decided well before any evidence was presented in court, in order to minimise embarrassment for the party. “The damage (from the Bo case) is already very, very severe, so it is really now a case of damage control,” said Cheng Li, an expert in Chinese politics at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

“But of course the whole thing is not over yet, as we are still waiting to see Bo Xilai dealt with, and that will be very, very crucial coming into the party congress.” AFP