Scandal May Topple Party Official in China

Here in Chongqing, the Communist Party’s secretive, stage-managed process of installing a new generation of leaders has become a more open and sometimes brutal contest, with fortunes of leaders of broadly different inclinations at stake.

“What’s going on in Chongqing is a battle over the future course of China,” said Wang Kang, a local writer and commentator. “It is about how China should be run.”

It also has implications for American politics. Despite denials from Washington, American diplomats and Chinese sources with ties to security services say that one of the chief figures in Chongqing sought asylum at a United States Consulate but was rebuffed partly because the United States did not want to create a diplomatic crisis ahead of Mr. Xi’s trip.

The main player is the region’s powerful party secretary, Bo Xilai, the closest China has to a Western-style politician. A tall, suave 63-year-old, Mr. Bo has intrigued foreign and domestic political watchers for two decades — as mayor of a port city, provincial governor, commerce minister and now head of Chongqing, a city-state the size of Austria with 30 million people. Unlike Mr. Xi, seen as humble and deft, Mr. Bo is a tenacious fighter and showman.

He is also a contender for the Standing Committee of the party’s Politburo, which would put him among the nine people — with Mr. Xi at the head — who have final say on everything from currency exchange rates to Tibet.

But Mr. Bo’s chances have suffered a serious blow because of an unfolding corruption scandal involving Wang Lijun, the man he recruited as Chongqing’s top law enforcement officer. While some observers say Mr. Bo’s ascension cannot be ruled out, most seem to think his upward trajectory has stalled.

Until recently, Mr. Bo’s tenure in Chongqing had seemed brilliant. For most of his political ascent, Mr. Bo relied on his father, Bo Yibo, a revolutionary war leader who died only in 2007. As the offspring of a top-ranking official, or “princeling,” he is part of a network of people who can bypass normal channels, both for personal and political gain.

Mr. Bo used these connections to carry out a series of populist changes in Chongqing. Once the wartime capital of China, it was expanded in the 1990s into a small, mostly rural province with a metropolis at its center.

He vowed to double the region’s urban population to 20 million by the end of the decade. And he oversaw a pilot program to award millions of farmers urban residency and built hundreds of thousands of low-rent apartments to lure them, although local experts say his underlings have relied heavily on coercion.

Another of Mr. Bo’s initiatives was a much-publicized campaign to revive Mao-era songs and ideology. He also made populist promises to double rural incomes and took on foreign companies like Wal-Mart, burnishing his credentials with people wary of the influence of multinational corporations in China.

Most famously, he attacked the triads, mafia-type groups that for decades arbitrated disputes and squeezed ordinary citizens.

To attack the triads, Mr. Bo hired Mr. Wang, an official he had known from an earlier posting. Mr. Wang had a reputation for courage — he had personally stormed a hotel and arrested a crime boss after knocking him cold with an uppercut — but also for brutality. In one case reported in the Chinese news media, he was so enraged that a pedicab driver had had the temerity to be run over by his white Mercedes that he leapt out, beat the man and had him detained for 15 days on a traffic violation.

With Mr. Bo running political interference, Mr. Wang took on the gangs, arresting 2,000 people, including high-level Communist Party officials charged with shielding crime lords. The campaign also ignored normal judicial procedures. There have been 13 executions.