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The Bo Yibo Family: An Elder's Seven Children, and a Life Sentence

Among the red families of contemporary China, the Bos are the only one whose family ledger was written into a criminal judgment. A second-instance ruling listed this family's money item by item: the airfares, hotel bills, travel expenses, and credit-card debts that a Dalian businessman paid for the family over more than a decade; the euro price of a villa in Cannes, France; the whereabouts of RMB 5 million in public funds that lay for three years in a law firm's accounts. Beyond the judgment, the family has another set of books: the seven children of the elder Bo Yibo sat, respectively, in the Foreign Ministry, in a state-owned financial conglomerate, on the boards of listed companies, at university lecterns, and at the Politburo table. This chapter first tells the ledger inside the judgment, then the positions outside it. The two ledgers together are the family's complete picture.

I. Bo Yibo and His Seven Children

Bo Yibo (1908–2007), a native of Dingxiang, Shanxi, was a Communist elder. In 1949 he became the first Minister of Finance of the Central People's Government, and thereafter served for many years as a Vice Premier of the State Council and director of the State Economic Commission; in the 1980s he was executive vice chairman of the Central Advisory Commission, presiding over its daily work, and was recognized as one of the "Eight Elders" (Source 21). One episode of his early life later became a major case: in 1936, Bo Yibo and 61 other Communists held in Beiping's Caolanzi Prison were, with the approval of the Party's Northern Bureau and after completing certain formalities, released to join the resistance against Japan; during the Cultural Revolution this was falsely framed as the "Group of 61 Traitors" case and became one of the fuses for the attack on Liu Shaoqi, and only in December 1978 was it rehabilitated by the Central Committee. This chapter's focus is on the descendants; that background is given in a single stroke.

Bo Yibo had two wives. His eldest daughter, Bo Xiying, was born to his first wife, Li Ruming; his second wife, Hu Ming, had been his secretary and died by suicide during the Cultural Revolution in January 1967 (per public materials). Hu Ming bore him six children. The destinations of the seven children are themselves a distribution map of the red nobility (Sources 20, 21):

The eldest daughter, Bo Xiying (1937– ), is a diplomat who served as director of the African Affairs Department of the Foreign Ministry; her husband, Zheng Yaowen, was China's ambassador to Denmark. The second daughter, Bo Jieying (1946–2019), held a doctorate in biochemistry earned in the United States, served as vice chair of the council of the Health Ministry's Center for International Exchange and Cooperation, and died on November 24, 2019. The eldest son, Bo Xiyong (1947– ), under the alias Li Xueming, worked for nearly fourteen years in the state-owned financial conglomerate China Everbright Group, and is dealt with in a dedicated section below. The second son, Bo Xilai (1949– ), rose to the Politburo and the Chongqing Party secretaryship, and in 2013 was sentenced to life imprisonment — the main thread of this chapter. The third daughter, Bo Xiaoying (1950– ), is an associate professor in Peking University's history department, researching Sui-Tang archaeology and grotto art, now retired. The fourth son, Bo Xicheng (1951– ), and fifth son, Bo Xining (1954– ), have been active mainly in Beijing business circles, connected with the "Liuhexing" group of hotel-management enterprises.

The list rewards a second look: of the seven children, not one is an ordinary employee. Diplomacy, the health system, state finance, a university, business, politics — every cell is among the most weighty positions inside the system. That is not the content of any judgment; it is this family's normal state over the decades before the judgment was written. After 2012, two names on the list successively vanished from public view: one into Qincheng Prison, one out of a listed-company announcement. On January 15, 2007, Bo Yibo died in Beijing; and on the same day exactly forty years earlier, his wife Hu Ming had died by suicide in the Cultural Revolution (Source 21).

II. Bo Xilai: With the Judgment as the Skeleton

Bo Xilai was born on July 3, 1949, graduated from Peking University's history department, and later earned a master's degree in journalism from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He served successively as mayor and Party secretary of Dalian, governor of Liaoning, and Minister of Commerce. During his nearly ten years governing Dalian, he shaped the city image of the "Pearl of the North" with urban squares, green spaces, and football, and was among the most media-famous mayors in China at the time. In 2007 he entered the Politburo as Chongqing Party secretary, carrying out "sing red, strike black" — the mass singing of red songs and a large-scale campaign against organized crime — in which the then public security chief Wang Lijun was the campaign's lead commander. Bo Xilai was regarded as one of the most controversial and most famous senior officials in Chinese politics of the day. His downfall began with the spillover of a murder case: on November 15, 2011, the British businessman Neil Heywood was found dead in a resort hotel in Chongqing; on February 6, 2012, Wang Lijun, then Chongqing's vice mayor and public security chief, entered the U.S. Consulate General in Chengdu, and the affair became public. On March 15, 2012, Xinhua announced that Bo Xilai had been removed as Chongqing Party secretary; on April 10, Xinhua announced again that he had been suspended from the Politburo and the Central Committee and placed under investigation by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (Source 4). On September 28, 2012, a Politburo meeting decided to expel Bo Xilai from the Party and from public office and transfer him to the judicial organs; the same day his National People's Congress deputyship was terminated, and on September 29 he was arrested (Sources 1, 4).

On April 10, 2013, investigation by the Supreme People's Procuratorate concluded and the case was transferred to the Jinan People's Procuratorate for review and prosecution; on July 25, the Jinan procuratorate brought the public prosecution. From August 22 to 26, 2013, the Jinan Intermediate People's Court heard the case in open court, with the proceedings live-blogged on the court's official microblog — a rare arrangement in Chinese judicial history. The prosecution alleged bribes totaling more than RMB 21.79 million; the figure the court ultimately determined was different, and everything below in this chapter uses the court-determined figures (Source 1).

Bribery, Part One: Tang Xiaolin's Three Payments

The court determined that Bo Xilai directly accepted bribes from Tang Xiaolin, general manager of Dalian International Development Co., Ltd., totaling RMB 1,109,446 in cash and property, in three installments: in the second half of 2002, at his Shenyang home, US$50,000 (equivalent to RMB 413,830); in June 2004, in his Ministry of Commerce office, RMB 50,000; and in the second half of 2005, in his Ministry of Commerce office, US$80,000 (equivalent to RMB 645,616) (Source 1). Bo Xilai and Tang Xiaolin had once been colleagues. In return, Bo Xilai obtained two benefits for Dalian International Development: on December 4, 1999, he signed approval on the company's request report for the transfer of the Dalian municipal government's Shenzhen office to the company, and on March 2, 2000, a Dalian municipal government meeting decided to transfer the Shenzhen office's personnel, finances, and property to the company as a unit, after which the company used the office's land to co-develop the "Dalian Building," from which both the company and Tang Xiaolin personally profited; and in 2002, when Tang Xiaolin sought car-import quotas, Bo Xilai directed him to Vice Governor Xia Deren, and in the end 24 quotas were approved in the name of the Dalian Automobile Industry and Trade Group Company, which Tang Xiaolin resold at a profit. Three payments; two of them took place in the office of the Minister of Commerce — the judgment writes the locations down very clearly.

Bribery, Part Two: Xu Ming, the Villa, and a Student's Bills

The large mass of the court-determined bribery came from Xu Ming, chairman of the Dalian Shide Group. The judgment determined: Bo Xilai knew of and approved his wife Gu Kailai's and his son Bo Guagua's acceptance of property from Xu Ming, totaling RMB 19,337,930.11 (Source 1). At the core of this sum stands a villa in Cannes, France.

In 2000, Gu Kailai planned to buy a villa in France, and Xu Ming agreed to fund it and made the specific arrangements. To conceal the fact of Gu Kailai's overseas purchase and to avoid tax, Gu Kailai commissioned the French architect Patrick Henri Devillers to design a scheme for buying the property in a company's name, and set up Russell Properties S.A., which she actually owned and controlled. The purchase money left the country through a fake trade channel: on November 7, 2000, Xu Ming directed Sidelong International Electrical (China) Co., Ltd., a Shide Group subsidiary, to use a false import contract to apply to the Dalian branch of Bank of Communications for an irrevocable documentary letter of credit of US$3.23 million; on November 29 of the same month, after the letter of credit was negotiated, the funds were remitted to the Russell Properties account designated by Gu Kailai. On July 9, 2001, Devillers, in the name of Fontaine Saint-Georges Real Estate Company — actually owned and controlled by Russell Properties — used €2,318,604.70 of it (equivalent to RMB 16,249,709.18) to buy the Fontaine Saint-Georges villa at 7 Avenue des Pins in Cannes. One noon in 2002, at his Shenyang home, Bo Xilai watched slides introducing the villa together with Gu Kailai and Xu Ming, and Gu Kailai told him expressly that Xu Ming had funded the villa's purchase (Source 1). The judgment determined the villa to be proceeds of crime, to be further recovered and confiscated according to law. Thereafter, Gu Kailai successively replaced the nominee holders of the villa-owning company and its affiliates' equity, to continue concealing the true ownership (Source 1).

Beyond the villa lay eight years of daily upkeep. The court determined that from 2004 to 2012, while Bo Guagua studied abroad, Xu Ming paid for Gu Kailai, Bo Guagua, and their relatives and friends airfares of RMB 1,864,630.80, accommodation of RMB 148,424, and travel expenses of US$102,241 (equivalent to RMB 654,056.13); on July 28, 2008, at Bo Guagua's request, Xu Ming spent RMB 85,710 on a "Segway" self-balancing scooter as a gift to him; in November 2011, Gu Kailai, on the pretext of Bo Guagua's credit-card overdraft, had the household attendant Zhang Xiaojun ask Xu Ming to clear the debt, and Xu Ming commissioned his friend Wang Jizhuo to spend RMB 335,400 exchanging U.S. dollars and pounds sterling, of which the attendant deposited US$20,000 and £17,900 into Gu Kailai's Bank of China passbook (Source 1). The judgment also states expressly: Gu Kailai had told Bo Xilai about Xu Ming's financial support for Bo Guagua's study and life abroad. These items together with the villa price are exactly the composition of the RMB 19.33 million-plus.

In return, the court determined four items of benefit secured, each with a concrete instruction or action (Source 1): First, football — at the end of 1999, when Shide acquired the Dalian Wanda football club, Xu Ming made his request through Gu Kailai, Bo Xilai expressed agreement, and on January 9, 2000, the club's registration was changed to the Dalian Shide Football Club, with Bo Xilai personally attending the founding press conference. Second, the fixed-point bungee-ball project — in 2000, Bo Xilai instructed a vice mayor to select a site for the project, and after an on-site inspection it was set at Dalian's Xinghai Bay Square, with instructions to handle the land-use formalities by lease. Third, the Shide petrochemical project — in October 2002, Bo Xilai chaired a special meeting demanding strong support and designating Vice Governor Xia Deren and others to coordinate; when the project site conflicted with the range of the Shedao-Laotieshan National Nature Reserve, he instructed that the reserve's boundaries be coordinated and adjusted, and the adjustment application was then reported upward level by level and approved; as Liaoning governor and as Minister of Commerce he also met executives of the partner Saudi Basic Industries Corporation on multiple occasions and placed the project on the formal agenda of the China–Saudi Joint Economic and Trade Committee. Fourth, refined-oil import qualification — in March 2004 Xu Ming made his request in person, Bo Xilai expressed agreement, and on August 13 of the same year the Ministry of Commerce included Shide in the list of non-state trading enterprises filed for refined-oil imports.

Embezzlement: RMB 5 Million Lying in a Law Firm for Three Years

The court determined that in 2000 the Dalian municipal government undertook a renovation project, for a higher-level unit, of premises involving state secrets; the project was Bo Xilai's responsibility, with Wang Zhenggang, then director of the Dalian Bureau of Urban and Rural Planning and Land, in concrete charge; in March 2002, after the project was completed, the higher-level unit decided to disburse RMB 5 million. Wang Zhenggang twice asked Bo Xilai, by then transferred to Liaoning governor, how to handle it; the second time he proposed expressly: no relevant Dalian leader or department knew of this money, and it could be left to Bo Xilai "to supplement the household." Bo Xilai at once telephoned Gu Kailai and told Wang Zhenggang to discuss the handling with her. Gu Kailai and Wang Zhenggang agreed to transfer the money for safekeeping to Zhao Dongping, director of Beijing's Angdao Law Firm, with whom she was closely connected — the judgment uses precisely the phrase "closely connected with Bo Gu Kailai." To avoid notice, the money was first remitted to Dalian Economic and Technological Development Zone Yisheng Audiovisual Systems Co., Ltd., the project's contractor, and then, between May 2002 and March 2005, successively remitted into other-company accounts designated by Zhao Dongping and into the Angdao Law Firm's account (Source 1). The court found the RMB 5 million to constitute embezzlement (corruption of public funds) and ordered it returned to the Dalian Municipal People's Government.

Abuse of Power: From a Slap to "Rest-and-Retreat Treatment"

The abuse-of-power portion occurred entirely in January–February 2012, and the chain the judgment determined is as follows (Source 1): On the evening of January 28, 2012, Wang Lijun informed Bo Xilai that Gu Kailai was suspected of murdering Neil Heywood; the next morning, Bo Xilai summoned Wang Lijun and others to a meeting, berated Wang Lijun for "framing" Gu Kailai, slapped him across the face, and smashed a cup on the floor. That evening, learning that the "11·15" case's original investigators Wang Zhi and Wang Pengfei had exposed Gu Kailai's suspected murder by submitting resignation letters, Bo Xilai, at Gu Kailai's request, arranged for Wu Wenkang, deputy secretary-general of the municipal Party committee, to investigate the two — the second-instance ruling points out specifically that Wu Wenkang had no authority to investigate. From January 29, Bo Xilai proposed removing Wang Lijun as Party secretary and chief of the public security bureau; the municipal Organization Department head and Political and Legal Affairs Commission secretary pointed out in person that appointing or removing a public security chief required the approval of the Ministry of Public Security; Bo Xilai paid no heed, chaired a Standing Committee meeting on the afternoon of February 1 that made the removal decision, and announced it the next day. Four officers who had earlier worked the case — Guo Weiguo, Li Yang, Wang Pengfei, and Wang Zhi — had already been sentenced for shielding Gu Kailai and perverting the law for personal ends; Wang Pengfei was further placed under investigation after February 15 and subjected to confinement measures, and on February 17, on Bo Xilai's proposal and approval, his nomination as a candidate for deputy district chief of Yubei District was cancelled. On February 6, Wang Lijun defected to the U.S. Consulate General in Chengdu. When responses were studied in the early hours of the next day, Bo Xilai indulged Gu Kailai's participation and adopted her proposal that a hospital issue a mental-illness diagnosis certificate; Chongqing's Daping Hospital, without examining Wang Lijun and without any diagnostic medical record, issued a diagnosis certificate stating that "Wang Lijun is in a state of severe depression with a major depressive episode," which the second-instance ruling determined to be "manifestly false." On the morning of February 8, with Bo Xilai's approval, the relevant Chongqing departments released the false information that Wang Lijun was "currently receiving rest-and-retreat-style treatment." The judgment determined that the above acts caused the "11·15" case to not be investigated and handled according to law in good time, and were an important cause of the Wang Lijun defection incident, constituting especially serious circumstances.

Sentencing and the Second Instance

At the first-instance trial, Bo Xilai retracted the self-written materials and handwritten confessions from his investigation stage, denied accepting Tang Xiaolin's money, claimed to know nothing of the villa or of Xu Ming's support, and maintained that the RMB 5 million in public funds had nothing to do with him. On September 21, 2013, the Jinan Intermediate People's Court rendered its first-instance judgment ((2013) Ji Xing Er Chu Zi No. 8), publicly pronounced the next day: Bo Xilai, for bribery, was sentenced to life imprisonment, deprived of political rights for life, and had all his personal property confiscated; for embezzlement, to fifteen years' imprisonment and confiscation of RMB 1 million of personal property; for abuse of power, to seven years' imprisonment; with combined punishment for multiple offenses, it was decided to execute life imprisonment, deprivation of political rights for life, and confiscation of all personal property. The proceeds of bribery, RMB 20,447,376.11 in cash and property, were to be turned over to the state treasury according to law; the RMB 5 million of embezzled funds was to be returned to the Dalian Municipal People's Government; and the Fontaine Saint-Georges villa was to be further recovered and confiscated (Sources 1, 3). The bribery amount alleged by the prosecution was more than RMB 21.79 million, some RMB 1.34 million more than the court's determined figure — the second-instance ruling discloses that after the trial the first-instance court verified the bills to which the defense had objected, excluded the defective bills, and did not count them in the bribery amount (Source 1). The gap between the alleged and determined figures is itself a trace left by trial confrontation.

Bo Xilai appealed on eleven grounds, and his defense counsel raised four further defense opinions. The Shandong Higher People's Court, after an in-chambers review, pronounced its second-instance ruling on October 25, 2013 ((2013) Lu Xing Er Zhong Zi No. 110): appeal dismissed, original judgment upheld (Sources 1, 2). The ruling records that Bo Xilai is held at Qincheng Prison under the Ministry of Public Security; all later public reporting likewise places him serving his sentence at Qincheng.

The second-instance ruling's assessment of the defense deserves recording in several places, because it marks out the judgment's evidentiary logic (Source 1): On the self-written materials and handwritten confessions, the ruling states that Bo Xilai himself acknowledged there had been no illegal evidence-gathering such as torture in the case, that the self-written materials were made of his own volition and mutually corroborate witness testimony and documentary and physical evidence, and that they do not meet the conditions for exclusion of illegal evidence. On Gu Kailai's capacity to testify, the ruling cites the judicial appraisal in the effective judgment of her intentional-homicide case: at the time of the offense she suffered from a mental disorder caused by psychoactive substances, but her capacity for recognition was intact and she bore full criminal responsibility; she declined to appear in court, and under the law the court cannot compel a defendant's spouse who declines to appear; her written testimony was read out in court and the audio-video recordings of her testimony were played in court and subjected to cross-examination, and may be credited. On the "official business impartially conducted" defense, the ruling is at its most blunt: whether seeking benefits for others was part of the normal performance of duties does not affect the constitution of the crime of bribery. On the villa slides, the defense claimed that the Apple computer from which the slides were extracted was manufactured in 2005 and could not have played them in 2002; the ruling found that the slide file itself was made on July 6, 2002, signed "kailai," was identified and confirmed by both Gu Kailai and Xu Ming, and that investigators had merely extracted the 2002 file from a computer she later used. On "not knowing," the ruling adopted a passage of Xu Ming's testimony: when Bo Xilai spoke with him at the Ministry of Commerce in 2004, he asked him to keep the villa purchase secret, and said that Gu Kailai had mentioned how much help and support Xu Ming had given Gu Kailai and Bo Guagua over the years; the ruling also established a standard of general knowledge — whether Bo Xilai knew the villa's operating process, ownership structure, area, or value, and whether he knew each fee's specific amount and manner of payment, does not affect the finding of subjective knowledge. On the relative gravity of sentences, Bo Xilai relied on Wang Lijun's single two-year sentence for defection to argue that his own finding of especially serious circumstances in the defection incident was "to invert primary and secondary"; the ruling's answer is that the two cases' facts and legal evaluations differ, and that ground likewise cannot stand.

III. The Gu Kailai and Wang Lijun Cases: Judgments That Interlock

Bo Xilai's judgment does not stand alone. It interlocks with two other judgments to piece together this family's last year in Chongqing.

Gu Kailai is herself from a general's family — her father, Gu Jingsheng, was a founding major general. Early on she founded Beijing's Kailai Law Firm and was a well-known figure in 1990s Chinese legal circles. On August 9, 2012, the Hefei Intermediate People's Court opened the trial of Gu Kailai and Zhang Xiaojun for intentional homicide; on August 20 the first-instance verdict was pronounced (Xinhua): the court determined that Gu Kailai and her son Bo Guagua had come into conflict with the British businessman Neil Heywood over economic interests, that Heywood had used threatening language toward Bo Guagua in emails, and that Gu Kailai, believing her son's personal safety threatened, resolved to kill Heywood. On November 13, 2011, Heywood was invited to stay at Chongqing's Nanshan Lijing Holiday Hotel, where Gu Kailai, together with Zhang Xiaojun, poisoned and killed him. A judicial appraisal showed that Gu Kailai had full criminal responsibility, though she suffered from a mental disorder. The Hefei court sentenced Gu Kailai, for intentional homicide, to death with a two-year reprieve and deprivation of political rights for life; Zhang Xiaojun was sentenced to nine years' imprisonment (Source 5). On December 11, 2015, the Beijing Higher People's Court ruled to commute Gu Kailai's sentence to life imprisonment (Sources 7, 23); according to public materials, she is serving her sentence at Yancheng Prison in Hebei.

Read against each other, the two judgments reveal a detail worth noting: in her husband's judgment, Gu Kailai is the bribery channel — the villa's handler, the actual beneficiary of Xu Ming's upkeep; in her own judgment, the murder motive is again tied to a "conflict of economic interests," and Heywood was one of the middlemen who had assisted Gu Kailai in operating the villa arrangements in those years. The judgments do not spell out this layer of connection, but with the two documents side by side, the chain is clear.

The Wang Lijun case followed close behind. On September 24, 2012, the Chengdu Intermediate People's Court pronounced its first-instance verdict: Wang Lijun, for bending the law for personal ends, defection, abuse of power, and bribery — four offenses combined — was sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment and deprivation of political rights for one year; Wang Lijun stated in court that he would not appeal (Source 6). In the bribery portion, the prosecution alleged that he had accepted property totaling more than RMB 3.05 million — the largest single item likewise from Xu Ming: in April 2009, Xu Ming spent more than RMB 2.85 million buying two houses in Beijing for Wang Lijun's immediate family members (Source 6). That is to say, the same Xu Ming was at once maintaining the Party secretary's wife and children and buying Beijing homes for the public security chief's family. At Bo Xilai's second instance, Bo had cited Wang Lijun's single two-year defection sentence to question the proportionality of his own sentence; the Shandong Higher Court rejected the argument item by item in its ruling (Source 1).

First, an account of Xu Ming himself. Xu Ming was born in 1971 in rural Zhuanghe, Dalian; in 1992 he co-founded the predecessor enterprise of the Shide Group, started in plastic profile materials, and later expanded the group into a private empire spanning four great industries — chemical building materials, petrochemicals, finance and insurance, and culture and sports — holding stakes in the Bank of Dalian, Pacific Insurance, and other financial institutions; in 1999 Shide fully took over the Dalian Wanda football team and built the "Shide system" that swept up domestic top-flight titles, making Xu Ming himself a celebrated figure in both Chinese football and business (Source 22). The relationship the judgment presents is this: at every key node of this businessman's industrial map — the football club, the petrochemical project, the refined-oil import qualification — there corresponds an instruction, an attendance, or a statement by Bo Xilai; and at the other end of the accounts stand the Cannes villa and eight years of a student's entire expenses.

Xu Ming's own ending is not set out in any fully public judgment. According to Caixin and other media reports, Xu Ming was ultimately sentenced to four years and six months for bribery, originally to complete his term in September 2016. On December 4, 2015, Xu Ming died in prison in Wuhan, aged 44; Xinhua reported that the cause of death might have been acute myocardial infarction, and Agence France-Presse and other international media followed with reports (Sources 16, 22). Less than ten months remained until his release.

IV. Bo Xiyong (Li Xueming): Fourteen Years at Everbright, and a Resignation Announcement

Of Bo Yibo's seven children, Bo Xiyong's trajectory best illustrates the word "position." A graduate of Tsinghua University's mechanical engineering department, he served early as director and Party secretary of the Beijing Oil Pump and Nozzle Factory, then moved into the aerospace system as vice president of China Aerospace Science and Technology International Group and in other posts; from 1996, under the name "Li Xueming," he served as an executive director of China Aerospace International Holdings Limited. In 1998 he entered China Everbright Group, thereafter serving as an executive director and deputy general manager of Everbright Group and as a member of the 11th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference; on June 25, 2003, he additionally became an executive director and vice chairman of the Hong Kong-listed China Everbright International (later renamed China Everbright Environment) (Sources 9, 20).

Note the detail: the eldest son of an elder, serving in a state-owned financial conglomerate and a Hong Kong-listed company not under his own name but under an alias, for nearly fourteen years. Company announcements, annual reports, and director lists carry only the three characters "Li Xueming." His true identity was no secret within the industry, yet the formal documents always kept a layer between. Bloomberg reported that in 2010–2011, Li Xueming sold 12 million shares of Everbright International, realizing about HK$43.2 million, while still holding 10 million options (about 0.27% of the company's share capital), with a 2011 annual salary of HK$1.7 million (Source 9).

On April 10, 2012, Bo Xilai was placed under investigation. Half a month later, on the evening of April 25, China Everbright International announced via HKEXnews: Li Xueming was resigning as the company's vice chairman and executive director and as a member of the board's executive committee, effective immediately. The reason given in the announcement was written out plainly — to reduce the possible adverse effect on the company of "recent media reports concerning his family background" (Source 8). The same evening, he resigned as executive director and deputy general manager of Everbright Group (Source 20). A listed-company announcement thus became the first public document of this family's ebbing power: his younger brother's name appears nowhere in the announcement, but everyone knew what "family background" meant.

V. Bo Guagua: The Student in the Judgment, and His Own Account

Bo Guagua, whose birth name is Bo Kuangyi, was born on December 17, 1987, in Beijing, the only son of Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai. His education was completed entirely overseas: in his youth he went to Britain, attending Harrow School; in 2006 he entered Balliol College, Oxford, to read philosophy, politics and economics; in 2009, over academic problems, the university ordered him suspended for a year (widely reported in British media), and he graduated in 2010; he then went to the United States, receiving a master's in public policy from Harvard's Kennedy School in May 2012; in 2013 he entered Columbia Law School, graduating in 2016 with a J.D. (Sources 13, 15, 24).

The trajectory itself is the question: how could the salary income of a minister or a governor support the tuition of Harrow, Oxford, Harvard, and Columbia in a row? In April 2012, after his father's fall, Bo Guagua, then at Harvard, issued a statement to the university newspaper The Harvard Crimson, saying that his tuition and living expenses at Harrow, Oxford, and Harvard "came from just two sources — scholarships earned independently, and assistance from my mother from the savings of her years of successful practice as a lawyer and author," and denied that he had ever driven a Ferrari (Sources 13, 14). His father, Bo Xilai, had said much the same at a March 2012 press conference: his son had a full scholarship, and his wife was a successful lawyer.

But a year and a half later, the Jinan court produced a different set of accounts. The court determined (see Section II of this chapter): between 2004 and 2012, the airfares, accommodation, travel expenses, credit-card debts, and gifts that Xu Ming paid for Bo Guagua's side came to about RMB 3.09 million (court-determined), and Bo Xilai "knew of and approved" them; and the Cannes villa that Gu Kailai arranged was likewise a place prepared for this son's future stays in Europe (Source 1). The statement and the judgment are set side by side here, without this chapter deciding for the reader — with one reminder only: the judgment side's chain of evidence includes Xu Ming's own testimony, payment vouchers, and the company documents of the villa transaction, and passed through trial cross-examination; the statement side has to this day produced no scholarship documentation of any kind.

After 2012, Bo Guagua never returned to China. After graduating from Columbia in 2016, his whereabouts were unknown for a time; in December 2019, Canada's The Globe and Mail reported on the Montreal Power Corporation's long-standing ties with the Bo family, and mentioned that Bo Guagua was living in Canada (Source 17). In November 2024 he went to Taiwan to marry Hsu Hui-yu, the eldest daughter of the Hsu family; the wedding banquet was held in Hsinchu, and Agence France-Presse and Taiwanese media reported it; the bride's family is the Yilan Hsu family, founders of the Lotung Poh-Ai Hospital (Source 18). In December 2024, in a rare long post on the social platform X, he spoke out for his parents, calling his father's case political persecution and his mother wronged; Reuters and other media reported it (Source 19). Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council stated at the time that he remains a mainland Chinese national (per media reports).

One more person is appended: Bo Xilai's eldest son, Li Wangzhi (1977– ), his son by his former wife Li Danyu, originally named Bo Wangzhi. After graduating from Columbia University, Li Wangzhi worked in financial investment in Beijing. Bloomberg's 2012 reporting mentioned that Citigroup's China operation's hiring of Li Wangzhi had been seen as an example of the outside world currying favor with the Bo family (Source 12). After the Bo case, there has been no further public news of Li Wangzhi; what this chapter can account for ends here.

VI. The Remaining Children: The Normal State Outside the Judgment

Bo Xiying, Bo Jieying, Bo Xiaoying, Bo Xicheng, and Bo Xining never entered any judgment. Accounting for their destinations is meant to let the reader see the shape of this family's un-accidented part — for that is the everyday form of the red nobility.

Bo Xiying (1937– ), the eldest daughter, born to Bo Yibo and his first wife Li Ruming. She took the diplomatic line: she served in the Foreign Ministry for many years and was director of its African Affairs Department; her husband, Zheng Yaowen, was China's ambassador to Denmark (Source 21). Bo Jieying (1946–2019), the second daughter, took the professional line: she went to the United States and earned a doctorate in biochemistry, and after returning served as vice chair of the council of the Health Ministry's Center for International Exchange and Cooperation; she died on November 24, 2019 (Source 21). Bo Xiaoying (1950– ), the third daughter, took the academic line: an associate professor in Peking University's history department, her research field is Sui-Tang archaeology and grotto art, now retired; BBC Chinese reported on her academic work in 2017 (Source 21).

Bo Xicheng (1951– ) and Bo Xining (1954– ) took the business line. According to public materials, Bo Xicheng has served as chairman of Beijing Liuhexing Hotel Management Company, vice president of the China Association for Poverty Alleviation and Development, chairman of the Beijing Xingda Student Aid Foundation, and as an independent director of CITIC Securities; Bo Xining is chairman of Beijing Liuhexing Group Co., Ltd. (Source 21). Both men's public information is limited; the corporate-registration-level details have not been verified item by item in this chapter, and their posts are given here only on the caliber of public-material compilations, without extension.

Set the seven children out in one table: one diplomat, one health-system official, one scholar, one state financial conglomerate executive, two businessmen, one Politburo member. Apart from the convicted Bo Xilai, the other six positions all continue on, quietly. That is precisely the structure this series exists to record: what gets into trouble is the individual; the positions belong to the family.

VII. Two Calibers of Family Wealth

Finally, the two sets of books must be kept apart, because they are often confused with each other.

The first caliber comes from the court. In Bo Xilai's case, the court-determined figures are: bribes of RMB 20,447,376.11; embezzlement of RMB 5 million; and the confiscation of one French villa (purchase price €2,318,604.70). These are figures that, after investigation, prosecution, and trial cross-examination, met the criminal standard of proof. Their boundary is equally clear: they count only the portions that can be proven to correspond directly to Bo Xilai's own exchange of power for money, and include no assets of any other family member.

The second caliber comes from the media. On April 13, 2012, Bloomberg published an investigative report stating that Gu Kailai's four sisters controlled a business network worth at least $126 million; in June of the same year, Bloomberg, in another report, looked back and stated that the assets accumulated in the names of Bo Xilai's relatives came to at least $136 million (Sources 10, 11). It must be explained: this is an asset caliber aggregated by reporters from company-registration and shareholding documents, not net of liabilities, and not equal to any individual's net assets; the bulk of it sits in the Gu sisters' network, not in the names of Bo children; it has never been court-determined, and it is a completely different thing from the judgment-determined RMB 20.44 million-plus in bribes, with which it must not be interchanged.

But the two calibers do not negate each other. The judgment answers the question "how much money can the court prove," Bloomberg the question "how large is the plate this family network actually controls." The key to the red nobility has never lain in the balance of any one bank card, but in the positions themselves: the authority of a minister and a governor, a deputy general manager's seat in a state financial conglomerate, a listed company's vice-chairmanship, a Cannes villa, Harrow and Harvard degrees — these things are distributed along bloodlines, each illuminating the others. The Bo family's distinction is only that it is the sole family that let a court write part of it into a judgment.

Gaps in the Record (noted candidly)

1. The judgment in Xu Ming's case has not been published in full: his "four years and six months for bribery" is the caliber of Caixin and other media reports, with no judicial document available to cite; the reports differ slightly on his exact place of imprisonment, and this chapter writes only "died in prison in Wuhan."
2. The text of the ruling commuting Gu Kailai's sentence has not been published; the commutation date and her current place of imprisonment follow Xinhua, media reports, and public-material compilations.
3. The corporate-registration details of Bo Xicheng, Bo Xining, and the "Liuhexing" group of enterprises (equity, registered capital, subsistence status) have not been verified item by item; this chapter gives their posts on the caliber of public-material compilations and does not extend the account to infer their asset scale.
4. Bo Guagua's specific occupation and posts after 2016 (and the form of his connection with Power Corporation) appear only in media reports such as The Globe and Mail, with no company announcement or confirmation by the person himself; the details of his Taiwan wedding (date, place, guests) are limited to the public reporting of Agence France-Presse and Taiwanese media and were not confirmed by the parties; his residence and nationality status follow media reports of the Taiwan Mainland Affairs Council's public statements.
5. Li Wangzhi's whereabouts over the past decade are a matter of no public record; the description of his work in financial investment in Beijing stops at Bloomberg's 2012 reporting caliber.
6. Bo Yibo's "Group of 61 Traitors" case is given in this chapter as a single stroke of background, based on published Party-history narrative, without citation of archival originals; the circumstances of Hu Ming's death follow public materials, with no official document seen.
7. Bloomberg's two figures, $136 million and the Gu sisters' $126 million, are both 2012 reporting calibers, and no updated statistics of the same caliber have since appeared; when cited, they must be presented together with their caliber explanation, and the figures must not be quoted in isolation.

Contact: endccpworld@proton.me