BO Xilai and China's Future

choi

Mark Leonard, What the Rise and Fall of Bo Xilai Tells Us About China's Future; Bo Xilai, a colourful politician who brought prosperity to a Chinese backwater, was too ambitious for the Politburo's grey men,
Sunday Telegraph, Mar 18, 2012
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ ... -Chinas-future.html

Quote:

"After Mao and Tiananmen Square, the Chinese elite has preferred its senior officials to be bland to the point of invisibility, and its politics free of excitement. But Mr Bo, 62, has been a stubborn exception to the rule, a rare maverick in a system that does everything to discourage them.

"Yet what made Bo so central to the future of China was not so much the Maoist rhetoric, but the mix of populist, egalitarian and free-market policies that he introduced. * * * [He has been] building 750,000 social housing units, compensating farmers for their land through a new land-exchange scheme

"The mix of social policy, state investment, and subsidies to attract big multinationals like Apple, Foxconn and Hewlett Packard was no simple return to Maoist economics.

Note:
(a) ruction (n): "a noisy fight"
(b) The author writes, "In China everything that matters is measured, and local officials in Chongqing would proudly reel off the vital statistics of their progress."

In other words, China's politics is obsessed with numbers, such as growth (always growth!) of economic output of a jurisdiction (from city to province to the entire nation).
(c) The author says "half a million Red mottoes [were] sent by text messages."

The plural form of "motto" is "mottoes"--also "mottos."

All definitions are from www.m-w.com.
(d) The Wire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wire
(set and produced in and around Baltimore, Maryland; broadcast by the premium cable network HBO, 2002-2008)

(e) At the end of the essay is this introduction: "Mark Leonard is director of the European Council on Foreign Relations and author of 'What does China Think?' (Fourth Estate)."

(i) That book was published in 2008.
(ii)
(a) Fourth Estate (disambiguation)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate_(disambiguation)
(Fourth Estate, an imprint of the HarperCollins publishing house in the United Kingdom)
(B) Fourth Estate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate
(or fourth estate)

Quote: "Thomas Carlyle attributed the origin of the term to Edmund Burke, who used it in a parliamentary debate in 1787 on the opening up of Press reporting of the House of Commons of Great Britain. Earlier writers have applied the term to lawyers, to the British queens consort (acting as a free agent, independent of the king), and to the proletariat. The term makes implicit reference to the earlier division of the three Estates of the Realm [the clergy, the nobility, and commoners * * * as the First, Second, and Third Estates respectively].

(iii) The book has been translated into Chinese (in eBook format; publisher: PublicAffairs; 2008)
http://search.overdrive.com/ti/b ... -mark-leonard-ebook

PublicAffairs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PublicAffairs
(launched in 1997 by Peter Osnos; is an imprint of the Perseus Books Group, located in New York City)

(f) The author mentions "Jiang Wenran, a former class-mate of Mr Bo's from university."

Jiang Wenran is a member of China Institute
http://www.china.ualberta.ca/en/Resources/ChinaAcademics/Wenran Jiang.aspx
, and Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Alberta.
http://www.politicalscience.ualb ... ty/JiangWenran.aspx
(Degrees:
PhD:Carleton University
MA: International University of Japan
BA: Peking University)

If you have good memory, you will recall that last Friday (Mar 16), I introduced
(i) his Globe and Mail article, see
Bo’s Downfall and China’s Politics
http://www.yilubbs.com/thread-15344-1-1.html
("(3) Weirang Jiang, Bo Xilai, a fallen star in an opaque land. Globe and Mail, Mar 16, 2012")
AND (ii) a report citing Professor Jiang:

In Memoriam BO Xilai
http://www.yilubbs.com/thread-15342-1-1.html
("(5) Jaime A FlorCruz, The Rise and Fall of China's Bo Xilai. CNN, Mar 16, 2012")

(g) Whatever your viewppoints about China's politics and /or Mr Bo's fall from grace, you have to concede that the West is diverse. Further, China has not released its version of how Messrs Wang Lijun and Bo went wrong--much less committed crimes--it is understandable that people in the West do not see eye to eye with Beijing.
(h) In any event, most Western articles, including this one, is well balanced and fair--what with the  information so far available publicly.

The "what with" is a phrase that means "on account of."