Bloomberg blocks report to stay in China

Bloomberg was opening a “hornets nest” by withholding information that could be important to its clients.
By Demetri Sevastopulo in Hong Kong

Matthew Winkler, Bloomberg editor-in-chief, said the Chinese Communist party had made very clear that printing stories about the financial assets of its leaders was off-limits.

Bloomberg News has been accused of quashing a story that alleges financial ties between China’s richest man and relatives of top Chinese Communist party officials because of fears that the government would prevent it from operating in China.

An investigative team at the agency spent the past year probing links between the businessman and several current and former members of the Politburo Standing Committee – the body that ultimately rules China.

One person familiar with the circumstances said senior Bloomberg editors blocked the story at the eleventh hour. The person said Matthew Winkler, editor-in-chief, told the reporters in a conference call on October 29 that Bloomberg could not risk jeopardising its position in China by running the story.

Bloomberg denied that the group, whose main business around the world is selling financial data, had spiked the story. 

“The reporting as presented to me was not ready for publication,” Mr Winkler told the Financial Times, adding that Laurie Hays, a senior editor, and other top editors agreed with that assessment.

The person familiar with the discussions dismissed Bloomberg’s comments that the story was not ready for publication, saying it had been approved and just needed a Chinese government response. “We had crossed the Rubicon,” the person said. “The story was fully edited, fact checked and vetted by the lawyers.”

Mr Winkler declined to comment on whether he said on the conference call that the Chinese government would kick Bloomberg out of China if it printed the story.

“It’s not appropriate for me to comment on a private, internal conversation,” Mr Winkler said.

On Sunday, Mr Winkler sent an email to Bloomberg editorial staff stating that there had been “misleading” reports in rival media about its reporting in China.

“I want to assure you that there has been no change in policy on how and when we publish our stories,” Mr Winkler said in the email.

In the October conference call, Mr Winkler compared the situation with Nazi-era Germany where some media undertook self censorship to remain in the country, the person said. A Bloomberg spokesman did not challenge the veracity of the comment about Nazi-era Germany when asked by the FT.

Reuters reporter denied China visa

Reuters over the weekend said the Chinese foreign ministry had rejected a visa application for Paul Mooney, a veteran China reporter who wrote widely about human rights in China while working for the South China Morning Post, writes Tom Braithwaite in New York.

The reporter has called on western governments to retaliate against Chinese media organisations.

Mr Mooney, whose request for a visa was turned down after an eight-month wait, said reporters from Xinhua, People’s Daily and CCTV should be blocked from working in the US.

“Unless western and foreign governments stand up and have some kind of reciprocal policy, China is going to continue to do it,” he said. “I believe there are more than 700 Chinese reporters in the US and they don’t have to jump through the hoops that we have to and it’s not fair.”

“It’s up to the US government, the British government to retaliate, to reciprocate,” he said, naming Xinhua, People’s Daily and CCTV as examples of large Chinese media organisations active overseas.

He said he disagreed with the comments attributed to Matt Winkler, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, that operating in China, like Nazi Germany, required some concessions to be able to stay in the country.

“I don’t agree with that,” he said. “If they do that, they win. These kind of intimidation tactics win. If everyone stands up and continues to report the reality are they going to close down The New York Times, The Financial Times and Bloomberg? I don’t think so.

Mr Mooney’s visa rejection was first reported by the New York Times.

Several people familiar with the story said it focused on Wang Jianlin, the founder of Dalian Wanda, a real estate group, who recently paid $28.2m for Picasso’s “Claude et Paloma”. Forbes ranks Mr Wang as China’s richest man with $14.1bn.

​A spokesman for Wanda declined to comment. The FT itself has seen no evidence to indicate links between Mr Wang and party officials.

Mr Wang got his start in Dalian, the northeastern city where Bo Xilai, the jailed former high-flying Chinese politician, served as mayor for a number of years. The other major Dalian property developer, Xu Ming, was detained in connection with the Bo scandal and was not seen until he appeared in court in August during the Bo trial.

Bloomberg’s decision not to print the story comes as China becomes even more aggressive in clamping down on the foreign media. Bloomberg’s website has been blocked since last year when it published an exposé on the wealth accumulated by relatives of Xi Jinping, China’s president. It is also having trouble getting journalist visas for reporters.

Censors have also blocked access to the website of the New York Times, which published a similar story last year about then Premier Wen Jiabao. The paper has had difficulty obtaining some journalist visas since then.

Jonathan Fenby, former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post and author of The Penguin History of Modern Chin a, said Bloomberg’s move to spike the story “brings into question the service that you [Bloomberg] are supplying”. He added that the company was opening a “hornets nest” by withholding information that could conceivably be important to its clients.

In the conference call with four reporters and editors in Hong Kong who worked on the year-long investigation, Mr Winkler said the Communist party had made very clear that printing stories about the financial assets of its leaders was off-limits, the person familiar with the story said.

The person said that senior editors in the US had given strong support all along to Michael Forsythe and Shai Oster, the two reporters who led the large team chasing the story. But, in October, they suddenly changed their mind, and said the story was not fit for publication.

“They said they were putting it on the backburner, but it was blindingly clear that it was being killed,” the person said.

On September 18, Ms Hays wrote an email to the reporters in Hong Kong which said the latest version of the story was “almost there” and that once she and other editors, including managing editor Jonathan Kaufman, had taken a close read, they would review it with the company’s lawyers.

Nine days later, Mr Kaufman emailed the reporters to say the story was “terrific”. In the email, which was obtained by the FT, he wrote: “The story is terrific. I am in awe of the way you tracked down and deciphered the financial holdings and the players. It’s a real revelation. Looking forward to pushing it up the line.”

I want to assure you that there has been no change in policy on how and when we publish ourstories

- Matthew Winkler, Bloomberg editor-in-chief in email to staff

However, four weeks later, Ms Hays called the reporters in Hong Kong to tell them that the story was going to be put on the “backburner”, according to the person familiar with the situation. The spokesman declined to comment on the emails, or say why Mr Winkler felt compelled to refer to self-censorship if editors had simply decided that the story was not yet ready for publication.

The spokesman also declined to say why Bloomberg had allowed the reporters to pursue the story for so long if they had harboured concerns about the potential impact on the company’s ability to operate in China.

The person familiar with the dispute said the journalists on the conference call with Mr Winkler “appreciated his honesty” but disagreed that Bloomberg would be thrown out of China if the story was published.

The dispute emerged in public on Friday after the pro-democracy Taiwan arm of a Hong Kong media group released an animated video that ridiculed Bloomberg and Mr Winkler for spiking the story and the New York Times published a story on Saturday.

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In China, everyone is guilty of corruption

Your business can't survive a day if you are not corrupt.

By Lijia Zhang

Police stand guard outside the court where disgraced politician Bo Xilai was sentenced to life in prison in September.

• Use of guanxi or connections part of everyday life
• Businessmen say they can't survive unless they are corrupt
• China needs to focus on rule of law not "rule of men"

Another "tiger" has been caught. 

Last week, Ji Jianye, the mayor of my hometown Nanjing, a major city in eastern China, was arrested on suspicion of accepting bribes worth about 20 million yuan ($3.3 million)
After taking power in March, President Xi Jinping launched a high-profile anti-corruption campaign, vowing to catch both tigers and flies -- big and small corrupt officials. 

China has seen plenty of such campaigns, arising and subsiding like summer storms.
But this one appears to be the most vigorous since China opened up; when corruption became rampant in the new market economy and officials started to trade power for financial gains.

Author and social commentator Lijia Zhang

Much as I appreciate our president's determination, his battle feels like an attempt to "put out a big fire with a glass of water," given how corruption has reached every corner of our society.
Chinese public opinion surveys identify corruption as the most hated social problem, yet everyone is also guilty of it.
Last year, when my father fell seriously ill, we took him to a decent hospital close by but were told the beds were fully occupied. 

As always, we turned to our guanxi -- our network of connections -- for help.
Fortunately, a relative, a not so senior but well-connected official, managed to secure a private room at the hospital, which is reserved for ranking leaders. 

In return, the relative agreed to get the son of the hospital director into the most desirable school in Nanjing.

Corruption hurt Communist Party

On China: Reform

On China: Tigers and flies

I became aware the weight of guanxi shortly after I was thrust into adulthood: At 16 I was dragged out of the school to work at a military rocket factory.
Two months later, when Spring Festival came, my mother requested that I visit my boss' home with gifts she had prepared.

Naive and embarrassed, I refused. 

Mother angrily predicted: "You'll never go far in life if you don't know how to la guanxi!" 

The verb la means to pull or to develop. 

Sure enough, I never got any promotion during my decade-long stint at the factory even though I acquired a degree in mechanical engineering.
For any Chinese businessman, guanxi is essential. 

Recently, I met up with a long-lost friend, with whom I marched in the Nanjing streets back in the spring of 1989 and shouted "Down With Corruption" -- one of the complaints that had sparked the unprecedented Tiananmen Square democratic movement.
More than 20 years later, this friend spends 90% of his time running his high-tech company. 

His youthful idealism has gone and his waistline has expanded considerably. 

With a ghost of a smile, he blames it on the excessive dining, drinking and occasional visits to prostitutes that are part of the tiresome game of guanxi. 

"Your business can't survive a day if you are not corrupt," he told me.
He has to smooth every step of his business with gifts or outright bribes: From obtaining the business license, to entertaining potential clients, to receiving 15% of the tax deduction that a high-tech company is entitled to. He estimates that 3% to 5 % of operating costs goes to guanxi.
Such practices drive entrepreneurs to seek senior officials as their patrons because politicians in China have the power to approve projects and allocate resources.
The relationship between the now disgraced politician Bo Xilai and businessmen Xu Ming, the founder of Dalian Shide Group, was typical of such patron-client relationships. 

Xu, a large man, allegedly fattened his pockets through his guanxi with the Bo family as he funded the family's jet-set life style.
Xu was detained shortly after Bo's arrest and testified against Bo at his trial in August, although Xu has not been charged with any wrongdoing.
Local media reports suggest that authorities are investigating similar ties between the newly disgraced Nanjing mayor and Zhu Xingliang, the richest businessman in Suzhou, a city near Nanjing, who has also been placed under house arrest.
And politically, China produces its top leaders more or less based on patron-client ties rather than meritocracy. 

Both President Xi and Bo are "princelings" -- the children of senior leaders, the most powerful and influential group in China. 

Nepotism, a form of corruption, has feudal roots.
In fact, I believe the whole corrupt practice of guanxi is rooted in China's long tradition of renzhi -- rule of men rather than the rule of law.
President Xi has called for a curb on official extravagance: No red carpet treatment, no luxury banquets and no fancy office buildings. 

But these are the symptoms not the root of the problem.
To stamp out corruption, he will have to not only observe the rule of law but also introduce genuine political reforms that would allow checks and balances, transparency, and independent scrutiny. 

Such remedies, although proven elsewhere, may be too strong for him to take.
I don't doubt that the authorities will net more tigers. 

But there will be hundreds and thousands more at large and countless flies, thriving in China's politically and culturally rich breeding ground for corruption.

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Double Indemnity: Criminal doubles are letting rich Chinese offenders get away with murder

The use of substitute criminals to take the place of rich offenders has infiltrated China’s highest courts

By Oscar Holland

As Bo Xilai stood in court to receive his life sentence last month, there could be no mistaking the faint smile of the Chinese politician who seemingly fell victim to his own political success.
But despite the unusually public nature of his demise, many in China were unconvinced that the man appearing in court would serve the punishment. 

Throughout the trial, posts on social media demanded to see pictures of Bo in his cell to prove that he was really there.
The online claims levelled against his wife, Gu Kailai, hinted at an even greater level of deception – that she was not in the courtroom at all. 

Images comparing her previously slim face with photographs of the plump-cheeked woman on trial were widely circulated on the net.
These allegations may seem far-fetched, but they are based on what many perceive to be a growing phenomenon. 

Media reports of ding zui (literally “substitute criminal”), where hired stand-ins take the place of offenders, suggest that such immunity to the legal process can be acquired with sufficient money or influence.
The use of this practice is, by its very nature, difficult to gauge. 

Very few high-profile figures have been implicated, but a 2009 case involving an official in Anhui province showed the influence that the powerful can exert to redirect blame.
Reversing his car at high speed, the former head of Yijiang’s district court, Ding Shuming, killed one person and injured two others in a road accident. 

He arranged for his usual driver, Zhong Ming, to report the incident to the police and take responsibility for the accident. 

Zhong agreed, though a late act of conscience from Ding two days later ensured that the right man appeared in court. 

He received a three-year jail sentence as a result.
It’s unclear whether hierarchical allegiance or financial gain motivated the driver’s willingness to take responsibility. 

However, other attempts at ding zui give an indication of the sums of money that may be involved.
An uninsured coach driver in Gansu province, whose name was reported only as Mr Li, killed one person and injured another after he crashed into the back of a motorcycle in July 2012. 

As he awaited the police, Li pleaded with one of the coach’s passengers to take his place and go to court, offering 150,000 RMB (£15,400) in return.
As the evidence was prepared for the hearing, inconsistencies emerged. 

Only after several rounds of questioning did the passenger eventually confess to the scam leaving Li to face trial, though his sentence was just one year and two months imprisonment.
Such attempts at ding zui are publicly reported by China’s domestic media, despite the notoriously opaque legal system. 

But it is impossible to ascertain how many instances are discovered at a stage that would imply official failures and thus dissuade courts from releasing the information. 

But an openly reported case in neighbouring Taiwan demonstrates the drastic extent to which the practice could be exploited in mainland China. 

Guo Ronghui, a 25-year-old a destitute drug addict, managed to forge a career as a professional body double.
Because he had been diagnosed with leukaemia, Guo was eligible for “medical parole”, exempting him from serving time for minor offences. 

He exploited this loophole to lucrative effect. 

It is alleged that he acquired 172 separate criminal records as a stand-in. 

He was sentenced numerous times, mainly on others’ drug and firearms charges, and accumulated prison sentences amounting to more than 48 years. 

None were served.
Guo typically charged his clients the equivalent of £5,000 to £10,000 per case and although many simply fled after paying their deposits, it is estimated that he earnt more than £60,000 as a scapegoat as well as accepting drugs as payment. 

In 2007, when questioned for violating the terms of his parole, Guo admitted to police he had been acting as a criminal body double for a decade.
Such examples highlight the dire financial and personal circumstances that push stand-ins into become willing scapegoats. 

The amount offered can vary hugely. 

In mainland China a demolition company owner charged with illegally destroying a house promised an impoverished body double approximately £20 a day for each day spent in jail on his behalf.
On the surface this phenomenon appears symptomatic of growing income inequality in modern China, but the explanation may be more deeply rooted, according to Geoffrey Sant, a lawyer and professor at Fordham Law School in New York.
His research on ding zui, due to be published next year, finds examples of body doubles being hired for imprisonment, physical punishment and even execution dating back to the mid-1600s. 

As well as financial gain, he attributes the continuation of the practice to cultural and family pressures. 

“The typical examples... are where somebody either surrenders themselves for their family member because they can get a lesser punishment, or because that person is the breadwinner and taking their place means the family still has income.
“It seems like this may be the dark side of filial piety, the Confucian ideal of sacrificing yourself for your parents,” he says.
The pressure of loyalty in a hierarchical society and the promise of sizeable payoffs provide somewhat diverse motivations for substitute criminals. 

But it is failings in the Chinese criminal justice system that may be encouraging the phenomenon to flourish, says associate law professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Eva Pils.
“You have a system that is in effect tolerant of false confessions,” she says. 

“The trial should be held to determine whether the defendant is guilty or not but ... it becomes a merely bureaucratic process, a procedure to go through.”
Given that the acquittal rate in Chinese courts is less than 1 per cent, if a substitute criminal makes it to the stand, then the chance of exposing ding zui falls drastically. 

The lack of judicial transparency, infrequent use of witnesses and officials turning a blind eye to the practice make it a viable option for the accused.
“Pressure put on police and prosecutors to solve crimes can be very direct because their performance assessments require them to close cases, and there is a well-known practice of pressurising investigators to ‘crack’ the case within a stipulated time-frame,” Pils says.
So while the accusations against Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai brought the phenomenon of substitute criminals to a mass audience via social media, it appears not to be solely the preserve of China’s elites. 

Money may certainly help, but societal hierarchy, family pressure and institutional failings can all conspire to put the wrong people behind bars.

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Clinton reveals U.S. role in high-level 2012 incident with China

By Max Fisher

Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks at Chatham House in London.
Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton has disclosed new information about the United States' role in a major 2012 diplomatic incident with China in which a Chinese official sought asylum at a U.S. Consulate but was turned away.

That incident, which helped trigger the downfall of prominent Communist Party leader Bo Xilai, one of China's biggest political scandals in decades, has long been shrouded in a degree of mystery.
The incident began in January 2012, when Wang Lijun, the deputy mayor and police chief of the southwestern city of Chongqing, confronted his boss, controversial Mayor Bo Xilai, with suspicions that Bo's wife had been involved in the murder of British businessman Neil Haywood. 

Bo responded by slapping Wang in outrage and demoting his longtime associate. 

A few days later, Wang fled to the U.S. Consulate in nearby Chengdu, apparently terrified for his life, and requested asylum. 

Chinese authorities surrounded the building. 

Some 24 hours later, Wang left the building and was promptly arrested.
At the time, neither U.S. nor Chinese officials would say what happened inside the consulate or why Wang left. 

Now, Clinton has provided new details, hinting at some of the apparently high-level U.S. and Chinese maneuvering over the case. 

In remarks last week at the London-based think tank Chatham House, video of which was released Friday, Clinton revealed that the United States rejected Wang's request for protection but did agree to help him relay a message to Beijing.
U.S. officials quickly decided, Clinton says, that Wang did not meet the legal requirement for asylum. 

"He did not fit any of the categories for the United States giving him asylum," she said. 

"He had a record of corruption, of thuggishness, of brutality. He was an enforcer for Bo Xilai." 

U.S. law prohibits asylum for anyone who has participated in the persecution of others, a standard that would probably have applied to Wang's famously heavy-handed campaign against Bo's political enemies in Chongqing.
Clinton added that the United States ruled out allowing Wang to stay at its consulate in Chengdu, something that other Chinese asylum-seekers have done to avoid arrest. 

In 1989, for example, democracy activist Fang Lizhi lived at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing for 13 months before he could be spirited out of the country. 

Clinton said the United States refused to extend this protection to Wang but did not rule out other kinds of assistance.
"He was trying to somehow get his way to a place of safety," she explained. 

"What we did was to tell him that he could not move in to the consulate, there was no grounds on which we could offer that to him."
Instead, according to Clinton, American officials offered to resolve the incident by quietly brokering a communication between Wang and the national leadership in Beijing. 

China's political system is unusually fragmented, with national and regional leaders often at odds.

Bo in particular was well-known for a style of rule that was at odds with Beijing's. 

Wang, it seems, had wanted to relay information about Bo's abuses directly to national leaders before he could be spirited away by the police encircling the building, who Clinton said were "subordinate to Bo Xilai."
"He kept saying that he wanted to get the truth to Beijing," Clinton said of Wang, explaining that the standoff was resolved when U.S. officials helped Wang send a back-channel message on to Beijing. 

"He wanted the government in Beijing to know what was happening. So we said we could arrange that. So that's what we did. And we were very discreet about it and did not try to embarrass anybody involved in it, but tried to handle it in a very professional manner, which I think we accomplished."
After that, Wang left the consulate willingly and was immediately scooped up by Chinese police.
While Clinton does not reveal the content of Wang's message, his flight to the consulate triggered the beginning of Bo's fall from a Communist Party rising star to disgrace and imprisonment. 

Top party officials quickly turned against him, publicly denouncing him and later accusing him of complicity in Haywood's murder. 

A month after the consulate incident, Bo was dismissed from his post. 

He and his wife were soon after arrested for Haywood's death, for which they both faced trial earlier this year. 

Wang was sentenced to 15 years in prison for abuses perpetrated under Bo's rule and for "attempting to defect" when he fled to the U.S. Consulate -- an unusually light sentence for high-level political crimes. 

Bo was given life in prison and his wife received a suspended death sentence.

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Bo Xilai Given a Life Term

By ANDREW JACOBS and CHRIS BUCKLEY

Bo Xilai was found guilty Sunday of bribetaking, embezzlement and abuse of power.
BEIJING — Bo Xilai, the pugnacious Chinese politician whose downfall shook the Communist Party, was sentenced to life in prison on Sunday after a court found him guilty of bribetaking, embezzlement and abuse of power in a failed attempt to stifle murder allegations against his wife.
The sentence means Mr. Bo, the son of a Communist revolutionary leader, is unlikely to ever return to public life, unless there is an extraordinary reversal in his political fortunes.
Given the Communist Party’s tight control of the judiciary, there was never much doubt that the Jinan Intermediate People’s Court in eastern China would find Mr. Bo guilty. 

Even before the verdict, commentaries in state-run news media declared that Mr. Bo’s guilt was clear.
Yet until the end, Mr. Bo remained defiant, pleading not guilty and contesting nearly every aspect of the prosecutors’ case during his trial in August. 

Family associates have said Mr. Bo would most likely appeal his sentence.
Party leaders under President Xi Jinping had hoped that prosecuting Mr. Bo, once an ambitious member of the elite Politburo, would demonstrate the party’s determination to tame the rampant official corruption that has stoked public ire, posing a potential threat to their hold on power. 

The government orchestrated an unusually public and lengthy trial for Mr. Bo lasting five days, and a court microblog gave the public selective but plentiful and salacious details of the proceedings, which included allegations of adultery by both Mr. Bo and his wife, Gu Kailai.
But the courtroom drama also let the public peer into a privileged world of dizzying wealth and nonchalant excess. 

Prosecutors described a casual rapport between Mr. Bo’s family and a businessman, Xu Ming, who paid for the travel and the extravagant purchases of Mr. Bo’s wife and younger son, including a $3.2 million villa in France, a $12,000 Segway and a flight aboard a private jet to Tanzania. 

During the trial, the prosecution said Mr. Bo had taken $4.4 million in bribes and embezzled money. 

Mr. Bo countered that he had been unaware of the gifts and payments.
The court gave Mr. Bo a small victory. 

Although it found him culpable for taking bribes worth $3.2 million, it said there was insufficient evidence concerning the air travel, which it said was worth about $218,000.
But many Chinese citizens believe that that lavish lifestyle is typical for families of senior officials, not the depraved aberration presented in state-run news media. 

And Mr. Bo’s supporters, who have remained vocal despite censorship, have argued that he is the victim of a political vendetta aimed at thwarting his populist ambitions. 

“The stupidest TV writers couldn’t come up with plots like that,” Mr. Bo said at his trial, responding to the prosecution’s claims.
In a recent letter that he wrote to his family from jail and that has been circulating among his close associates, Mr. Bo asserted his innocence and maintained his trademark defiance, declaring that his name would one day be cleared — much like that of his father, Bo Yibo, who was jailed at least twice by his enemies but emerged to become one of the Communist Party’s most revered luminaries.
Details of the letter, first published by the South China Morning Post, were confirmed by two family associates. 

“I will follow his footsteps,” Mr. Bo wrote of his father’s rehabilitation. 

“I will wait quietly in the prison.”
Tong Zhiwei, a professor at East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai, said the life sentence was to be expected, given that Mr. Bo remained combative to the end and because he offered little of the contrition expected of fallen officials.
“The fact that he didn’t plead guilty probably led to a heavier sentence” Mr. Tong said.

“But on the other hand, it was also relatively lenient, because in the past, not pleading guilty to bribetaking on this scale has been very rare and could bring a death penalty.”
He added that Mr. Bo’s sentence could later be reduced if he showed contrition and behaved well. 

“There’s that possibility, but he’ll probably have to serve at least a dozen or more years before that’s even possible,” he said.
Like the trial, the hearing during which Mr. Bo was sentenced was closed to foreign journalists, and there was no video feed of the proceedings. 

According to the Jinan court’s microblog, those allowed inside the courtroom on Sunday included three family members, two associates and 22 members of the news media. 

“Not only must justice be done; it must also be seen to be done,” the microblog feed said on Saturday.
Before reading out the sentence, the judge, Wang Xuguang, rejected Mr. Bo’s defense, including claims that his long hours of interrogation were abusive and thus illegal. 

He also brushed away the defendant’s assertion that Ms. Gu had psychological problems that rendered unreliable her testimony against her husband.
Mr. Bo, 64, was removed from his post as Communist Party secretary of Chongqing, in southwest China, in March 2012, more than a month after his former police chief, Wang Lijun, took refuge in a nearby United States Consulate for nearly 36 hours. 

There, and later under questioning by Chinese investigators, Mr. Wang implicated Mr. Bo’s wife in the murder of a British businessman, Neil Heywood, who was fatally poisoned in a Chongqing hotel villa in November 2011.
Ms. Gu was convicted in August 2012 and given a suspended death sentence, which is tantamount to life in prison. 

In September, Mr. Wang was convicted of defection and other crimes and given a 15-year sentence.
The judge said the court had established that Mr. Bo’s conduct was the main reason the murder of Mr. Heywood “was not dealt with promptly and according to the law” and why Mr. Wang fled to the consulate in what he described as a treasonous act. 

The court said of these episodes: “They created particularly malign social consequences, and brought major harm to the interests of the state and the people.”
After Mr. Bo was expelled from the Politburo and Communist Party, he was handed over to the authorities for a criminal investigation on several charges, including allegations of corruption, as well as charges that he tried to stymie an inquiry that threatened to expose Ms. Gu’s role in Mr. Heywood’s death.
A more complete version of what Mr. Bo said during his trial revealed the lengths to which the government sought to stage-manage the narrative, especially comments he made that could raise questions about the government’s tactics or damage the party’s public standing. 

According to testimony from the court proceedings obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Bo said interrogators threatened his family during hundreds of hours of interrogations that caused him to faint more than dozen times.
He also parried the abuse-of-power allegations against him by implicating the party agency he said had ordered him to cover up the emerging scandal over Mr. Heywood’s murder. 

He said the Central Politics and Law Commission told him to create a fake medical report attributing Mr. Wang’s decision to seek refuge inside the United States Consulate to a mental breakdown. 

At the time, the commission was led by Zhou Yongkang, a recently retired member of the Politburo Standing Committee who had been cultivating Mr. Bo as a potential successor.
In recent weeks, several senior figures who rose to power under Mr. Zhou’s tutelage have been detained by anticorruption investigators in what analysts say could be an effort to extinguish his lingering influence.
Despite the revelations at the trial, Mr. Bo has retained support among Chinese people who see him as a charismatic advocate of left-leaning policies.
Some said Mr. Bo would remain a symbolic leader, even in prison.
“This was a stiff sentence. He should have been found not guilty, if the law was truly applied,” said Han Deqiang, a professor at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics who has been among Mr. Bo’s most passionate defenders.

“This shows that power is bigger than the law, that politics is bigger than the law.”
But Fang Hong, a resident of Chongqing who was sent to a labor camp because he had mocked Mr. Bo, said the court and government had erred in failing to confront Mr. Bo’s broader misdeeds as that city’s party secretary, especially the abuses he unleashed during his crackdown on alleged organized crime.
“Actually, this was a relatively light sentence, compared to what other officials might get,” said Mr. Fang, whose sentence was overturned last year after Mr. Bo’s downfall. 

“If the government doesn’t confront these problems, they can happen again.”

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