A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel

by A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel- Murder, Money

  Hong Kong media, including the pro-Beijing English-language daily the South China Morning Post, gradually confirmed many of the details through their own sources in September and October.

  Asiaweek reported that on the night of the accident, the three victims had left a private party and were on their way to another. The Ferrari 458 could carry only one passenger but the two women squeezed in regardless. When the car was making a sharp turn, the woman sitting in the middle was thrown out on top of the driver, blocking the steering wheel. Allegations of car sex have not been substantiated.

  Fifty-five-year-old Ling Jihua was born in Shanxi, Bo Xilai’s ancestral province. Mingjing News revealed in December 2012 that the Bo and Ling families had very close ties. When he was alive, Bo Xilai’s father treated Ling Jihua as an adopted son. Like Bo, Ling married a wife with the last name of Gu, who is a legal professional by training and has been rumored to have used her husband’s political connections to engage in lucrative land and property investment and accumulate a large amount of wealth for the family. Ling’s wayward son had attended Beijing University, one of China’s elite schools, through his father’s connections. According to an official at the university, the son’s grades were far from ideal, but the university leadership still hired him as head of the school’s youth league organization after he had graduated a year before. Ling’s son was a notorious playboy and had expensive taste in cars.

  Ling started working for the China Youth League in a small county in Shanxi province in the mid-1970s. After Bo Xilai’s father was reinstalled as China’s vice premier in 1980, he brought Ling to Beijing. The twenty-three-year-old was elevated to the propaganda department of China’s Youth League Central Committee, where Ling had stayed for twenty years in different capacities within the organization before becoming chief of Hu Jintao’s office in 1999.

  “Ling’s close relation with the Bo family makes us understand President Hu’s initial position that Bo should be isolated from the Wang Lijun incident,” said Mingjing News. “Ling was Bo’s ‘deep throat’ in Beijing. His secret support gave Bo the confidence that he would survive the crisis. It explains why Bo was so cocky during the National People’s Congress.”

  Known for his uncanny ability to navigate the complex political issues in Beijing, Ling was familiar with every department inside the Central Party Committee and the central government. When Hu became the party general secretary, Ling became his “housekeeper,” taking care of often-overlooked minor details, such as checking venues where Hu was due to speak to ensure everything went as planned. Ling was put on the fast track for promotions and Hu made him chief of the General Office of the Party Central Committee, which took over handling the daily affairs of the senior leadership in 2007. Premier Wen Jiabao served in that function on his rise to seniority. Hu had intended to promote Ling and another youth leaguer, Li Yuanchao, who was in charge of the party’s personnel department, to the Politburo Standing Committee to balance the influence of the princelings.

  When the Bo Xilai scandal broke, Ling, in his position as chief of the General Office of the Party Central Committee, coordinated the investigation. His son’s accident on March 18 came three days after he signed the order to sack Bo Xilai. Ling immediately suspected it was a political assassination by pro–Bo Xilai forces and ordered members of the Central Guards Bureau to surround the Beijing Public Security Bureau on the night of March 19, demanding his son’s body be released before any investigation was completed, and ordering that they capture his “murderer.” The confrontation reportedly lasted more than an hour and some residents in Beijing wrote on Weibo that they had heard gunshots. Mobilizing members of the Central Guards Bureau to threaten the Beijing Public Security Bureau without authorization from the president is tantamount to staging a military coup. Zhou Yongkang, the head of the Law and Politics Commission at the Politburo Standing Committee and a close ally of Bo Xilai, was called and he rushed over to the Beijing Public Security Bureau building. He agreed to launch a thorough investigation.

  Realizing that the freak accident could ruin his political career if news of it leaked out, Ling was forced to strike a deal with Zhou, who allegedly agreed to have the Beijing traffic police erase the victim’s identity, bury details of the accident, and hide the crash in the usual traffic accident report. Zhou further agreed to support President Hu’s efforts to bring Ling onto the Politburo Standing Committee. In return, Ling would continue to lobby President Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao to limit the investigation of his friend Bo Xilai to ensure Zhou was not implicated.

  Ji Weiren, author of China Coup, wrote on Mingjing News that Zhou and Ling formed a team to handle the accident. Through Zhou, Ling contacted Jiang Jiemin, who was chairman of PetroChina, the world’s fourth-largest company. Jiang transferred from his company a large sum of money to compensate and silence the two surviving women. In the next twenty-four hours, police in Beijing received instructions from Zhou to destroy the original accident report. The name on the death certificate was changed to Jia, which is both a common family name but also sounded the same as the word for “fake.” In the following days, several Weibo postings by witnesses were deleted. Words such as “Ferrari accidents,” “che zhen,” or “car sex,” were blocked on major search engines. Two weeks later, Asiaweek carried a news story claiming that Ling Jihua’s son was actually alive and his Weibo account was still active. Because the victim’s name on the death certificate was Jia, some bloggers suggested that the crazy driver was the illegitimate son of Jia Qinglin, a prominent Politburo Standing Committee member.

  It looked like the cover-up might work. In exchange for Zhou’s help, Ling persuaded President Hu not to investigate Zhou’s involvement in the Bo Xilai case. He even ordered mental evaluations on Wang Lijun, the former Chongqing police chief, hoping to support the claim that Wang’s allegations against Bo were pure fabrications because Wang was deranged.

  At the same time, Zhou helped Ling manipulate the nomination process for the Politburo Standing Committee. Under normal circumstances, President Hu would solicit input through an informal vote from members of the Central Party Committee before the leadership transition. The balloting was originally planned to take place at a scheduled session on June 18. Fearing that his son’s Ferrari crash could leak out anytime, Ling persuaded President Hu to reschedule the voting for May 7, 2012. Prior to the informal vote, Zhou and Ling campaigned vigorously among members of the Party Central Committee. Ling’s chances looked good. The May 5 vote ranked him as the third–most electable candidate on the list, well positioned to win one of the five seats to be vacated.

  However, Ling’s action infuriated many who felt that the schedule change for the informal voting was done without a full explanation to members of the Politburo Standing Committee and without consulting retired leaders, such as former president Jiang Zemin. Some were said to have questioned Ling’s motives in letters to President Hu.

  In June, the cover-up of the Ferrari accident was exposed and former president Jiang Zemin reportedly called President Hu to his house, and asked if Hu was aware of it; Hu shook his head, saying he had been completely kept in the dark. Upon hearing that Ling had placed his son’s body in a morgue for months without allowing his wife and relatives to visit for fear that people would find out, Jiang called Ling “a person devoid of human nature” and former premier Zhu Rongji said derisively that “Ling was worse than a beast.”

  An Asiaweek report later revealed another startling fact about Ling. By August 2012, Younge, one of the Tibetan women, had gradually recovered. As she was going through physical therapy in Beijing, she allegedly became bored and started texting and chatting with her friends about the accident. A month later, Younge suddenly lost consciousness and died. Her doctor attributed her death to complications from her injuries. Her parents, who had decided to bring her back to her hometown in the winter, were devastated, but told reporters, “If she failed to survive, it’s fate.” An insider told Asiaweek that officials had warned Yo
unge’s family members who came to look after her at the hospital not to talk with anyone about the accident. “It’s a complex situation and the whole world wants to know the stories behind the accident,” the official was quoted as saying to Younge’s father. One of Younge’s friends saw the young woman’s death as suspicious. “In our country, a senior leader’s wife would even dare kill a foreigner with poison and the police chief would willingly cover up. So, killing an ordinary Chinese is no biggie to those in power.” Younge’s body was cremated immediately. There was no autopsy. A simple funeral was held and Younge’s family members were monitored and well provided for while they were in Beijing. They were told that her ashes had to remain in Beijing.

  In August, party elders such as Jiang requested a thorough investigation of Ling Jihua. But with the Bo Xilai case still pending, the Politburo Standing Committee considered it politically risky to handle two high-profile corruption cases before the 18th Party Congress. As a compromise, Ling Jihua was banished from the political center. On September 1, 2012, Ling Jihua was demoted to director of the Central United Front Works Department, a largely ceremonial post.

  There are rumors Ling may be prosecuted after Hu’s retirement. A source connected with the General Office of the Party Central Committee told me at the Carnegie Club in New York City that many youth leaguers, and princelings, accused Ling of deceiving President Hu and misleading him on many key decisions. For example, he allegedly formed a secret alliance with Bo Xilai back in 2011—if both were elected to the Politburo Standing Committee, they would seize power from Xi Jinping, the new party general secretary. Ling had also allegedly arranged for President Hu to visit Chongqing and endorse the Chongqing model, but was forced to change the plan after the Neil Heywood case emerged and the majority of the Politburo Standing Committee joined the anti-Bo camp. In addition, the family members of both Ling Jihua and Bo Xilai are said to have engaged in illegal coal mining in Shanxi province and profited from their political connections. Ling’s fall dealt a fatal blow to Hu and the youth league faction. In the final years of Hu’s rule, Ling allied with another prominent youth leaguer, Li Yuanchao, who was in charge of the party’s personnel and expanded his own influence by promoting, without President Hu’s knowledge, a large group of youth leaguers, many of whom were his personal favorites. In the aftermath of the Ferrari accident, the princeling faction, led by the new leader Xi Jinping and backed by Jiang, used Ling’s investigation as an excuse to purge youth leaguers connected with Ling, and Hu lost his leverage to intervene.

  Li Yuanchao, a strong candidate for the Politburo Standing Committee, was kicked out in the October reshuffle. Li Keqiang, the premier-in-waiting, was the only youth leaguer left with any power on the Politburo Standing Committee. Ling had, however, over the past three years, made it difficult for Li to see or talk with Hu and pushed Li more and more toward the princelings’ camp.

  At the end of the 18th Party Congress in November 2012, Hu stepped down from all party posts: party general secretary and chairman of the Central Military Commission, which commands China’s armed forces. Hu’s decision came as a surprise—many had speculated that he would keep control of the military for two years, like his predecessors Jiang and Deng Xiaoping had done, so he could install more of his allies in key positions and protect the interests of his family and his loyalists, such as Ling Jihua.

  In exchange for his full retirement, the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbaum reported, Hu wanted a systematic ban on intervention in the political sector by retired leaders, including the long-retired Jiang Zemin, age eighty-six, who had hovered over Hu for years after retirement. “It was a courageous move by Hu Jintao,” claimed the paper. “Hu’s action led to a second tidy transition since the Communist takeover in 1949, making it easier for the new leadership to initiate reforms.”

  To some Beijing observers, such as journalist Gao Yu, Hu’s full retirement might have been forced—in the months leading up to the 18th Party Congress, Hu had indicated numerous times that he would stay around for two years. Gao Yu wrote:

  Over the past two decades, the Communist Party leaders and minions have accumulated a large amount of economic gains while they were in power. They see themselves on a big boat trying to navigate in treacherous water. Oftentimes it is not up to the leader to decide whether he leaves the boat or not. He is controlled by members of his own interest group. If he plunges headlong into the water, others would also drown.

  Even though Hu might have been reluctant to relinquish power, the Ling Jihua scandal had weakened Hu’s bargaining power, leaving him without many choices.

  Throughout his career, Hu expressed no desire for posthumous fame. He was a technocrat who wanted only to complete his tenure peacefully and smoothly, without triggering an internal implosion. His famous slogan Bu-zhe-teng best illustrates his philosophy: “Don’t rock the boat, don’t make any changes.” But what Hu has passed on to his successor is a country rife with scandal and on the verge of political collapse.

  THE ULTIMATE LOSER “WE’LL NEVER ALLOW HIM TO WALK OUT ALIVE”

  SOME TRADITIONS are so deeply rooted that even the Chinese Communist Party knows better than to mess with them. The Ghost Festival is one such tradition, honored wherever Chinese people live, be it San Francisco or New York, London or Bangkok. By the Western calendar, it occurs around mid-November, when the spirits of the dead can cross over and visit the living. On that day, ancestors are honored with food and burning incense, and people burn stacks of fake money, intricately cut paper clothes, even paper TVs and exquisitely made paper houses at the graves of loved ones or on street corners (if the offerings are being made far from the hometowns). The Ghost Festival in 2012 marked the first anniversary of British businessman Neil Heywood’s murder. Perhaps Wang Lulu, Heywood’s Chinese widow, and his two children, twelve-year-old Olivia and eight-year-old Peter, followed the Chinese tradition and burned fake paper money for him, a man whose greed had led to his tragic end in Chongqing. At the time of writing, Wang and her children lived in London, but she has received promises from the Chinese government that she is free to visit China whenever she wants.

  A week after the Ghost Festival, my coauthor paid an anonymous visit to the Lucky Holiday Hotel, which outwardly seemed to maintain an air of normalcy. A young female clerk at the front desk shook her head warily when asked if she had heard about Heywood. An insider later said all the staff members had been replaced after the murder was made public. At the villa where Heywood was killed, it was business as usual but when my coauthor poked his head into a downstairs room, the maid, who was making the bed, seemed quite nervous—almost as if Heywood’s ghost had just appeared. She dialed the manager immediately.

  It is part of Chinese traditional belief that if a ghost is angry, it will not leave the world of the living until it has exacted revenge on its enemies. One can only wonder whether Heywood’s ghost has been lingering in Chongqing. Would he be able to find a medium and unveil the whole truth about the November 15 murder?

  Would Heywood take comfort in the fact that his death triggered one of the biggest political crises in the history of Communist China? That his murder set in motion a sequence of events that toppled Bo Xilai, a ruthless political maverick, and almost derailed China’s once-in-a-decade power transfer?

  If this were a Shakespearean play, the convictions of Gu Kailai and Wang Lijun would set the stage for Bo, the main character, to reveal himself. Bo’s dismissal from his powerful official posts in March 2012 and his detention in April heightened public suspense and fueled speculation. How would Bo’s political foes finish him off? Would his career end with a bullet in the back of the head?

  In late August 2012, political observers and Bo supporters published articles on Mingjing News speculating that Bo would make a soft landing. He would simply be kicked out of the Politburo and the Party Central Committee, in addition to losing his position as the Chongqing party chief—serious punishments for one who had devoted his life to climbing the party
hierarchy, but also a slap on the wrist in comparison with the prospect of years of languishing in jail. The assumption was not completely off-base. During Gu Kailai’s trial, Bo’s name was never mentioned, as if he had never existed. In addition, no corruption charges were filed against the Bo family. An analyst commented that Bo was not aware of his wife’s crime until later and that investigations into Bo’s family finances had not yielded any concrete evidence. In September, Wang Lijun’s lighter sentencing prompted more analysts to suggest that Bo would not face a criminal trial.

  “Members of the Politburo are very divided over Bo’s future,” said an official to Mingjing News after the Wang Lijun trial on September 17:

  Bo’s friends, including many princelings, still believe that he was unjustly punished for his courageous pro-people programs. Some powerful figures, such as Zhou Yongkang, and even President Hu Jintao, are reluctant to punish Bo. Even though Bo’s enemies want to destroy his chances of a comeback, they worry that an expanded investigation would implicate more people and create new political rivalries. Besides, with the volatile political situation in China, many officials understand very well that they could all end up like Bo someday. Come to think of it, who doesn’t have a skeleton in their closet?