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'Jackie Kennedy of China' at Center of Political Drama By JEREMY PAGE, BRIAN SPEGELE and STEVE EDER The wife of sacked Communist Party official Bo Xilai made quite an impression when she showed up in Mobile, Ala., 15 years ago with her young son in tow. Denver lawyer Ed Byrne, whom she had hired to represent Chinese companies embroiled in a legal mess in U.S. federal court, was struck by her brains, charm and beauty. Gu Kailai, he says, seemed like the "Jackie Kennedy of China." Gu Kailai was close to a British businessman who died mysteriously. . The business...

President Barack Obama was briefed on a former provincial police chief's overnight stay in a U.S. consulate in China in February while it was in progress or soon after it ended, a senior administration official said Friday, shedding new light on how significantly the U.S. viewed the encounter at the time. The 30-hour visit to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu by Wang Lijun, who had just been relieved of his job as police chief, rapidly spurred controversy in China and came just a week before Vice President Xi Jinping, who is expected to become China's next leader, paid a visit...

Mr Obama was briefed immediately on the suspected poisoning of the 41 year-old, which Chinese officials are linking to Mr Heywood’s powerful political allies, when American diplomats were told of the murder allegation. Gu Kailai, Mr Heywood’s former business partner and the wife of Bo Xilai, a senior politician who had been tipped for the highest political office, is suspected of ordering the Briton’s murder in a case at the centre of a political storm in China. The couple have disappeared from sight as the Communist Party attempts to regain stability....... Mr Obama was informed of suspicions over Mr Heywood’s...

It's been a disastrous start to the wet season in southern China as rounds of flooding rain and thunderstorms continue to track across the region. Multiple deaths and a massive evacuation for hundreds of thousands of people are being blamed on the persistent deluge. Heavy flooding rainfall tracked across southern China last week and over the weekend. Guizhou, Hunan and Guangxi provinces as well as Chongqing municipality were, and continue to be, some of the hardest hit provinces. The downpours turned streets into rivers and flooded buildings in parts of Chongqing on Sunday. More than 30,000 people have been affected...

This is a video of an apartment building on fire in Wuhan today. This building is OCCUPIED. I put this on DropBox to post here, please click on the source link to view the video. My wife is fairly new to the US (8 months from China) and today she has started to finally see how the Chinese government and system really treats their subjects. A sobering experience for her, to say the least. My prayers go out to everyone in China right now. Please share this video!

Bo Xilai is down, but not out yet Thursday, May 31, 2012 By David Kan Ting, Special to The China Post The oft-quoted Chinese saying, “people's eyes are snow-brilliant,” (人民的眼睛是雪亮的) has a ring of truth, after all. The adage, attributable to Chairman Mao Zedong, asserts that the eyes of people are piercing and sharp, able to see the difference between right and wrong, and to penetrate the smoke and mirrors of the reactionaries and counterrevolutionaries. The chairman seems to have got it right again this time as mainland China is rocked by scandal after scandal. Time magazine called the country...

Gu Kailai, the wife of ousted Communist Party official Bo Xilai, was found guilty and given a suspended death sentence on Monday for the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood in the southwestern city of Chongqing last year, according to observers in the courtroom. They said the Intermediate People's Court in the eastern city of Hefei gave Ms. Gu a death sentence with a two-year reprieve—a penalty that had been widely expected and is normally commuted to a life sentence in prison after two years of good behavior. Zhang Xiaojun, a Bo family aide, was also found guilty but given...

China: Two Incidents Open Pandora’s Box – Analysis May 22, 2012 By Bhaskar Roy Two incidents, one regarding Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai, and the other involving a blind human rights activist and self-taught lawyer Chen Guangchen, destroyed the myth that the Chinese system is a well oiled machine. Policy, individual, and bitter factional rivalries are kept sealed from the public to ensure the Party’s inviolability. This is the biggest political quake the country has experienced since the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident. The new age of social communication, the internet, has also damaged the Party’s secrecy. Even people inside the...

This thread is a friendly collaborative place for FReepers to analyze information and share opinons. FReepers have a wide variety of reasons for investigating Q Anon content; this is not the appropriate place to criticize or badger those who choose to use some of their time in this manner. I plan to post one thread at a time and ping new drops posted to it. When I post each (new) thread, the prior thread is retired and all new posts occur on the newest thread. If you are new to Q Anon, the three links below provide overviews to...

Bo Xilai's wife 'was in the room when Neil Heywood was poisoned' Bo Xilai's's wife Gu Kailai, accused of murdering the British businessman Neil Heywood, confessed to police that she was in the room when he was poisoned, according to an account given to American diplomats. By Damien McElroy, Malcolm Moore in Beijing 9:00PM BST 24 Apr 2012 Wang Lijun, the former chief of police in Chongqing, told US officials that Gu Kailai had confessed that she was responsible for the killing with the words: "I did it." Mr Wang gave his account of her alleged confession to diplomats at...

TexGrill Thread: BREAKING NEWS The Chinese-language news has just reported that former Chongqing CCP boss had just been sentenced to life imprisonment. The verdict was made by the Jinan Intermediate People's Court. An attorney representing Bo Xilai has already pledged to appeal the verdict. The link is in Chinese but verifies the story.

Fearful Final Hours for Briton in China The day before his death in the fog-shrouded Chinese city of Chongqing, Neil Heywood sensed that something was amiss. The British businessman had been summoned on short notice to a meeting in Chongqing in early November with representatives of the family of Bo Xilai, the local Communist Party chief, according to an account by a friend whom Mr. Heywood contacted at the time. Mr. Heywood told the friend he was "in trouble." After he flew to Chongqing, he tried to telephone his usual contacts but couldn't get through to any of them, according...

Bo Xilai Alleged Financier: George Soros BEIJING: Billionaire oil tycoon George Soros, an executive board member of the International Crisis Group, has played a major role in deposed Chinese Communist Chongqing Boss, Bo Xilai’s rise to fame and fortune in Dalian and Chongqing. ... http://www.dallasblog.com/201204241008984/dallas-blog/bo-xilai-alleged-financier-george-soros.html

A pipeline pumping natural gas from Myanmar to energy-hungry China has gone fully operational, state-run Chinese media said on Monday. BEIJING: A pipeline pumping natural gas from Myanmar to energy-hungry China has gone fully operational, state-run Chinese media said on Monday. The project, stretching more than 2,500 kilometres from western Myanmar to southwest China, will help the world's second-largest economy feed its growing energy needs. It comes as close political ties between the two nations have weakened, after Myanmar's quasi-civilian regime took office in 2011 and brought in sweeping reforms that have led to the scrapping of most Western sanctions....

Tiananmen II Minxin Pei : Thu May 10 2012, 03:12 hrs Bo Xilai’s downfall punctures the myth of China’s resilient autocracy Scandals in dictatorships perform several valuable functions. They often discredit their rulers and undermine their legitimacy. In some cases, scandals may even hasten the disintegration of authoritarian regimes by causing infighting among ruling elites or triggering loss of confidence and a crisis. For academics, such scandals frequently provide test cases for validating long-held theories or assumptions about the durability of authoritarian rule. From this perspective, the recent mega-scandal involving Bo Xilai, one of China’s political stars, is particularly useful...

City divided by disgraced Communist leader's legacy By Ed Flanagan, NBC News CHONGQING, China – Everywhere you go in Chongqing, you can see traces of the complicated legacy of Bo Xilai, the former Communist party chief who ran this municipality of 30 million people until scandal derailed him. At one time destined for a top post in China’s highest echelon of power, the standing committee of the politburo of the Communist Party, Bo aggressively poured money into this municipality in pursuit of his populist agenda. To drive through the windy roads that snake around this hilly metropolis is to see...

Beijing Steps In to Steady City Bo Ruled By BRIAN SPEGELE BEIJING—A senior Chinese leader expressed concern over the stability of development in Chongqing, the city run by fallen politician Bo Xilai until last month, and promised greater central-government support for the city in the aftermath of the upheaval. The statement marks the latest sign that China's central government is working to secure its hold over Chongqing, where Mr. Bo built a power base that helped launch him to national prominence. In recent weeks Chinese authorities have amped up official rhetoric against Mr. Bo and increased scrutiny of the city's...

China ejects Bo from elite ranks, wife suspected of murder By Chris Buckley and Benjamin Kang Lim | Reuters – 9 hrs ago BEIJING (Reuters) - China's Communist Party has suspended former high-flying politician Bo Xilai from its top ranks and named his wife a suspect in the murder of a British businessman, a dramatic turn in a scandal shaking leadership succession plans. The decision to banish Bo from the Central Committee and its Politburo effectively ends the career of China's brashest and most controversial politician, widely seen as pressing for a top post in China's next leadership to be...

Fall of China official roils Chongqing, with some public dissent Residents who benefited from local chief Bo Xilai's initiatives openly defend him. But the crackdown, with sensational allegations against his wife, continues. By Jonathan Kaiman, Los Angeles Times April 11, 2012 CHONGQING, China — Change has come quickly to this sprawling city of 30 million people since the charismatic local party chief, Bo Xilai, was fired last month by the national Communist Party leadership in China's most high-profile political shake-up in 20 years. Signs in public squares now ban gatherings to sing "red songs," a prominent element of Bo's effort...

In a storyline that could have been taken straight out of a television crime drama, Wang Lijun--missing former chief of police and current deputy mayor of Chongqing, a sprawling, gritty metropolis in China's interior--is presumably being held in Beijing, following a defection attempt at the U.S. Consulate. As the Machiavellian saga continues to unfold, the Chinese dissident Web site Boxun has reported that Wang uncovered a plot by his former boss, Bo Xilai, and a senior government official, Zhou Yongkang, to seize power from Xi Jinping, heir-apparent to the reins of Communist Party leadership. "They [Bo and Zhou] prepared a...