Bo Reverberations

choi

(1) Bo Xilai Fall Out - Where to Next. Australian Broadcasting Co (ABC), Apr 15, 2012.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012- ... ere-to-next/3950788
(Mr David Kelly: "It [Chongqing] tackled problems of inequality and it tackled them head on. Beijing had formulated policies of social management, social justice but nothing was happening. For Chongqing to take these strong steps looked as if the centre was doing nothing. So this was bound to cause a very familiar kind of political situation which we know from the Roman Empire. When Julius Caesar was successful fighting wars on the edges, Rome gets frightened. And this same kind of thinking is traditional in China. When a distant province has a governor or a boss who does well, the centre starts to worry that he's doing too well.")

My comment:
(a) This is a program hosted by Elizabeth Jackson. In this episode, Stephen McDonell interviews David Kelly, who looks at things with fresh perspectives.
(b) Hit "Transcript" if there is no text.
(c) Mr Kelly says "in this part [Chongqing] it was more like a 1920s Chicago if you like.

Al Capone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Capone
(Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone; 1899-1947; a Chicago gangster from the early 1920s to 1931)
(d) Mr Kelly then talks about "dockland culture."
(i) Docklands
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dockland

Select "Docklands, Victoria, an area within Melbourne, Australia."
(ii) History of Melbourne
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Melbourne
(section 10 World War two: "Organised crime was rife, with gang fights in the streets of Collingwood and underworld figures like Squizzy Taylor legendary")
(iii) Collingwood, Victoria
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collingwood,_Victoria
(e) Mr Kelly also states that besides his aide Wang Lijun, Mr Bo Xilai "he was evidently using standover methods himself, to fore a kind of de-facto state nationalisation policy."

The "standover" as a noun or adjectvie, as here, is not American English.

(i) stand over sb: "to stand close to someone and watch what they are doing <Don't stand over me all the time - it makes me nervous.>"
Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/stand-over-sb
(ii)
(A) Stand over (vi) or standover (n): "Australian New Zealand informal[:] to threaten or intimidate (a person)"
Collins Dictionary
http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/stand-over
(B) Collins English Dictionary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collins_English_Dictionary
(published by HarperCollins in Glasgow)


(2) Michael Sheridan. Murder and Power, Chinese Style. The Sunday Times, Apr 15, 2012.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/ ... 64oi6-1226326858757

Note: Revolutionary Road
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Road
(section 4 Film adaptation)

(3) Will Hutton, Beyond the Scandal Lies a Crisis at the Heart of China's Legitimacy; A Chinese Spring is inevitable if the party leadership doesn't reform itself. Guardian, Apr 14, 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commen ... table?newsfeed=true

Quote:

It "is a story with everything. The British class system meets the dark, internal labyrinths of the Chinese communist party to create China's biggest political scandal for decades.

"Prime minister Wen is the politician most keenly aware of the impending crisis. * * * After Gu's arrest, he made no reference to the official party line to justify what had happened; rather, he quoted a passage from Confucius's Analects about the need for leaders to behave with integrity. Wen knows that communism as an ideology is dead, hence his appeal to Confucius rather than Marx.

"Bo's challenge * * * was that while he agreed that the party had to continue to embrace what Deng Xiaoping called the 'socialist market economy,' it had to do more to emphasise the socialist component, otherwise the legitimacy crisis would overwhelm it. * * * He distributed relief to millions of poor and former party cadres while justifying his actions with references to Mao rather than Confucius * * * Yet Bo was associating a fight against corruption and reduction of inequality with such 'true communism' – so directly undermining the party's current ideological stance and worsening its legitimacy crisis.

"There was no autopsy on Heywood, thus allowing the party maximum freedom to act not in the name of justice but whatever faction in control deemed to be the party interest.

"Worse, Wen may wring his hands over his mistakes, worrying that the government can no longer support loss-making infrastructure projects to deliver growth – rapidly falling away to its lowest for years. But he did nothing to change things largely because as matters stand nothing can be done.

"The Soviet Union's leaders confronted similar dilemmas as they entered the early 1980s. After 60 years, revolutions lose their legitimacy and economic problems become intractable. The group around Gorbachev decided there was no option but acceleration of reform.

Note:
(a) The article says of the 1949 comunist revolution: "The revolution's leaders are long dead and they have been replaced by a competent if rotten administrative elite that looks more and more like the Confucian mandarinate the revolution overthrew."

mandarinate (n):
"1: the office or status of a mandarin
2 : a body of mandarins
3 : rule by mandarins"
www.m-w.com

(d) feather your own nest: "to make yourself rich, especially in a way that is selfish or dishonest"
Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/ ... ather-your-own-nest