China's biggest political trial in decades opened today with an extraordinary display of defiance by Bo Xilai, the former Communist party high-flyer facing charges of bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power.
In an austere, low-ceilinged courtroom in Jinan, the capital of coastal Shandong province, Mr Bo denied the bribery allegations in startlingly forthright terms. He called one of the prosecution’s main witnesses a “mad dog,” and dismissed testimony by his estranged wife as “laughable” and “ridiculous.”
“I was framed,” he said.
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Mr Bo stands accused of receiving bribes totalling almost 27 million yuan (€3.3m) between 2000 and 2012 from the heads of two companies - Tang Xiaolin, the head of Dalian International Development, and Xu Ming, the head of Dalian Shide Group.
Many analysts had expected the trial to stick to a carefully prepared script with Mr Bo typecast as a repentant villain. China’s ruling Communist party controls the country’s courts, and has almost certainly determined its verdict in advance; more than 98 per cent of the country’s criminal cases end in convictions.
But Mr Bo flatly denied that Tang gave him about 1m yuan in bribes between 2002 and 2005 and said that he had been pressured into making a false confession by party disciplinary officials.
“I admitted it against my will during the Central Discipline Inspection Commission’s investigation against me,” he said.
“I am not a perfect man, I am also not a strong-willed man, and I am willing to assume legal responsibility” for delivering the confession, he said. He called Mr Tang a “corrupt man” and “mad dog” after hearing the businessman’s testimony.
Mr Bo dismissed testimony from his estranged wife, Gu Kailai, who claimed that she had removed tens of thousands of dollars from shared safes in the couple's north-eastern homes and spent them while visiting the couple's 25-year-old son, Bo Guagua, who was then a student in the UK.
Mr Bo called his wife’s testimony ridiculous and his defence lawyer questioned Gu’s suitability as a witness, saying she was a convicted murderer with a history of mental illness.
Prosecutors also accused Mr Bo of receiving 20.7 million yuan (€2.53m) in valuables from Xu Ming, a property tycoon in the north-east city of Dalian, where Bo once served as mayor. In his testimony, Mr Xu claimed that he spent US$3.23m (€2.41m) for Ms Gu to acquire a villa in southern France and helped finance an expensive trip by his son to Africa.
Mr Bo denied any knowledge of the alleged transactions and in a forceful cross-examination of Mr Xu, forced him to concede that he had not directly raised such matters with Bo. “Did you tell me about Africa?” asked Mr Bo. “No,” said Mr Xu. “Thank you for seeking truth from facts,” Mr Bo replied.
Mr Bo, a 64-year-old former commerce minister and provincial governor, was once considered a main contender for some of China's most powerful political posts. But his career imploded in 2012 when his second-in-command, Chongqing's police chief, Wang Lijun, defected to a US consulate in south-west China carrying stacks of incriminating documents. The ensuing fallout revealed that Ms Gu had murdered British businessman Neil Heywood in a Chongqing hotel the previous autumn, ostensibly over a business deal gone sour.
Analysts say that Mr Bo’s performance may have been authorised by senior officials to present the appearance of a fair and open trial - the image would lend credence to newly-anointed president Xi Jinping’s crackdown on official malfeasance, a hallmark of his early tenure.
“I was surprised by the level of openness that they seem to have given Bo in terms of rejecting the charges,” said Rana Mitter, a professor of Chinese studies at Oxford University. “One thing you can say is that it may give the final verdict more credibility if Mr Bo is allowed to speak his piece, then they still level the charges against him,” he said.
State media revealed the proceedings via a series of transcripts posted to social media websites throughout the day, suggesting that high-level officials were comfortable with Mr Bo’s behavior.
Other aspects of the trial suggested that it was a carefully managed work of political theatre. Foreign media have been barred from entering the courtroom.
Social media, while an unprecedented platform for publicising this type of case, allow the authorities to curate which information is ultimately made public. The proceedings were not shown on live TV.
Photographs released by the courthouse also seemed meticulously crafted to convey the message that while Mr Bo has been has been stripped of his political agency, he has also been treated with respect.
In the first public images of Mr Bo since his detention a year-and-a-half ago, he appeared in a white dress shirt and black trousers, a stark contrast to the orange jumpsuit that many political prisoners are forced to don in public hearings.
But although Mr Bo stands at 1.86 metres , the images show him flanked by two police officers whose size dwarfs his own. “That was clearly staged to make him look small,” said Steve Tsang, an expert on Chinese politics at the University of Nottingham.
As party secretary of Chongqing, Mr Bo gained a wide popular support base with his “sing red songs” and “smash the black” campaigns, a combination of populist rhetoric and ruthless crackdowns on organised crime.
Guardian