Wang Lijun incident
Based on Wikipedia: Wang Lijun incident
In February 2012, a police chief walked into the American consulate in Chengdu, China, and stayed for thirty hours. Outside, seventy carloads of armed police surrounded the building. When he finally emerged, he was escorted to Beijing by agents from the Ministry of State Security. The Chinese government's official explanation? He was receiving "vacation-style medical treatment."
This bizarre phrase—vacation-style medical treatment—immediately became an internet sensation in China, spawning countless parodies. "Consoling-style rape," suggested one netizen. "Harmony-style looting," offered another. "Environmental-style murder." The dark humor captured something essential about the absurdity of the moment: one of China's most powerful regional governments was transparently lying, and everyone knew it.
But the Wang Lijun incident, as it came to be known, was far more than a public relations disaster. It would bring down one of the Communist Party's most ambitious politicians, expose a murder cover-up involving a British businessman, and reveal the brutal factional warfare lurking beneath the surface of Chinese elite politics.
The Gangbuster and His Patron
Wang Lijun was a police officer from northeastern China who had built his reputation as a "gangbuster"—someone who took down organized crime. In the world of Chinese law enforcement, this made him valuable. But what made him powerful was his connection to Bo Xilai.
Bo Xilai was Communist royalty. His father, Bo Yibo, was one of the "Eight Immortals" of the Chinese Revolution—the small circle of revolutionary elders who had fought alongside Mao Zedong and later shaped the country's direction after his death. This pedigree, combined with undeniable charisma and ambition, made Bo a rising star in Chinese politics.
The two men first crossed paths in Liaoning province, where Wang served as a local police chief and Bo was governor. When Bo moved, Wang followed. This kind of patron-client relationship is common in Chinese politics, where personal loyalty often matters more than institutional affiliation. Your career rises and falls with your patron's fortunes.
In 2007, Bo received a transfer that looked like a promotion on paper but felt like exile. He was sent from his post as Minister of Commerce in Beijing to become the Communist Party Secretary of Chongqing, an enormous city in China's interior with a population larger than many countries. The move was widely understood as a demotion, a way for rivals to sideline an ambitious competitor by sending him to the provinces.
Bo had other plans.
Sing the Red, Strike the Black
Rather than fade into obscurity, Bo Xilai transformed Chongqing into a political laboratory. His approach was encapsulated in a four-character slogan: chang-hong da-hei—"sing the red and strike the black."
The "red" meant reviving the aesthetic and rhetoric of the Mao era. Bo sponsored mass gatherings where citizens sang revolutionary songs. He promoted "red culture" through television programs, school curricula, and public events. This nostalgia for Maoism appealed to many Chinese who felt left behind by decades of market reforms, who remembered—or imagined—a time when inequality was less stark and collective purpose meant something.
The "black" meant organized crime. Chongqing, like many Chinese cities, had deep problems with criminal gangs that had infiltrated local government and business. Bo launched a massive crackdown, and Wang Lijun became his chief enforcer. Between 2008 and 2012, the campaign netted high-ranking officials, prominent gang members, and colorful figures like Xie Caiping, dubbed the "godmother" of Chongqing organized crime.
The campaign was genuinely popular. People appreciated cleaner streets and less obvious corruption. But it was also brutal and frequently ignored legal protections. Defense lawyers were intimidated or detained. Confessions were coerced. Property was seized without due process. Critics argued that Bo was using anti-corruption as a weapon against political enemies while building his own power base.
And it was working. Bo was generating national attention and building support for a seat on the Politburo Standing Committee—the seven-member body that effectively rules China. This alarmed his rivals in Beijing considerably.
Death at the Lucky Holiday Hotel
Neil Heywood was a British businessman who had become entangled with the Bo family. He had helped arrange for Bo's son, Bo Guagua, to attend Harrow, one of Britain's most prestigious private schools, and later Oxford. He was a fixer, a facilitator, someone who helped wealthy Chinese navigate the Western world.
By 2011, the relationship had soured. The details remain murky, but money was involved—it usually is. Heywood apparently felt he was owed more than he had received for his services. The Bo family disagreed.
In November 2011, Heywood was found dead in a suburban resort. The official finding was alcohol poisoning. This was a lie.
According to court proceedings that emerged later, Bo's wife Gu Kailai and an associate had murdered Heywood by poisoning him. Public security officials subordinate to Wang Lijun then fabricated the coroner's report. The cover-up appeared complete.
But cover-ups have a way of unraveling. Between late 2011 and early 2012, Gu Kailai took additional steps to destroy evidence—transferring hotel staff, eliminating documents, tying up loose ends. Wang Lijun grew increasingly uncomfortable. He believed these actions would attract attention rather than deflect it. More practically, he was now deeply implicated in a murder conspiracy, and he didn't trust Gu to protect anyone but herself.
The Slap
On January 28, 2012, Wang Lijun decided to address the problem directly. He went to Bo Xilai and, according to later testimony, revealed what he knew about Heywood's death and Gu Kailai's involvement.
Bo Xilai slapped him across the face.
This single act of violence marked the rupture of their relationship. In his later trial, Bo offered an unexpected explanation for the slap: he suspected Wang was having an affair with his wife. Whether this was true, or simply Bo's way of muddying the waters, remains unclear. What is clear is that after that moment, Wang Lijun was a dead man walking in Chongqing.
Bo moved quickly. Within days, several of Wang's subordinates—the people who had helped cover up Heywood's death—were placed under "investigation." Wang understood immediately what this meant. They weren't being investigated; they were being silenced. And he would be next.
Wang reportedly had one piece of leverage: a recording of a conversation with Gu Kailai that implicated her in the murder. But a recording is only useful if you're alive to play it.
The Consulate
On February 2, 2012, Wang Lijun was stripped of his position as police chief and reassigned to oversee "municipal education, science, and environmental affairs." In Chinese bureaucratic terms, this was a humiliating demotion—the kind that precedes a complete downfall.
Wang's first instinct was to contact the British consulate. After all, the victim was British, and the evidence he possessed might be of interest to Her Majesty's Government. But for unclear reasons—perhaps he couldn't get through, perhaps he got cold feet—that approach went nowhere.
Four days later, on February 6, Wang drove from Chongqing to Chengdu, a city about 300 kilometers away, and walked into the United States consulate. He carried documents, recordings, and a desperate hope that America might offer him protection.
The next thirty hours would reshape Chinese politics.
Outside, the situation escalated rapidly. Seventy vehicles full of armed police from Chongqing surrounded the consulate. Bo Xilai was apparently trying to retrieve his former deputy by force—or at least intimidation. When authorities in Beijing learned what was happening, they were furious. This was an international incident in the making, a diplomatic catastrophe. They ordered the Chongqing forces to withdraw.
Inside, American officials faced an impossible situation. Wang Lijun was offering them explosive intelligence about corruption and murder at the highest levels of Chinese politics. He was also seeking political asylum—a request that, if granted, would create an enormous diplomatic crisis with China. According to later reports, the asylum request was denied.
Wang apparently shared everything he knew: details about Heywood's murder, evidence of corruption by Bo Xilai and his family, recordings, documents. The Americans listened, took notes, and then faced the reality that they could not keep him.
After thirty hours, Wang Lijun walked out of the consulate "of his own volition." Waiting for him was Qiu Jin, the vice minister of State Security, who escorted him on a first-class flight to Beijing. He would never return to Chongqing as a free man.
Vacation-Style Medical Treatment
The Chongqing government's initial response to this crisis was darkly comedic. Wang, they announced, was "seriously indisposed due to long-term overwork and intense mental stress" and was undergoing "vacation-style medical treatment."
Nobody believed this for a second, which made the phrase irresistible. Chinese internet users, despite aggressive censorship, found ways to mock the obvious lie. The parodies proliferated: consoling-style rape, harmony-style looting, scientific-style theft. Each formulation highlighted the gap between the government's language and reality, the way official euphemisms could be stretched to absurd lengths.
The censors struggled to keep up. Keywords like "U.S. Consulate," "political asylum," and "Governor Bo" were blocked, then unblocked, then blocked again. "Wang Lijun" was censored on February 4 but allowed four days later. The inconsistency suggested confusion at the highest levels—or perhaps a deliberate decision to let information spread and weaken Bo's political base.
The Fall of Bo Xilai
Within weeks, the political calculus had shifted entirely. Bo Xilai, once considered a serious contender for the Politburo Standing Committee, was now toxic.
"When they do the horse-trading in Beijing, his enemies will definitely use this to shoot down his candidacy," observed China analyst Willy Wo-Lap Lam at the time. This proved prescient.
On March 8, Bo was conspicuously absent from the opening of the National People's Congress—the only member of the 25-person Politburo missing. A week later, he was removed as Chongqing's party secretary, following pointed public comments from Premier Wen Jiabao about the need for Chongqing officials to "seriously reflect" on the Wang Lijun incident.
The dominoes continued to fall. In mid-March, rumors of a coup d'état spread across overseas Chinese websites. There were allegations of gunshots in Beijing, of military movements, of a power struggle between Bo's faction and his enemies. The Chinese government later arrested six people and shut down sixteen websites for spreading these rumors, which were probably exaggerated but captured the genuine tension of the moment.
By August 2012, Gu Kailai stood trial for Neil Heywood's murder. She received a suspended death sentence—meaning she would likely spend the rest of her life in prison rather than being executed. The trial was remarkably brief, lasting only seven hours, and many observers believed Gu had agreed to cooperate in exchange for her life.
The following month, Wang Lijun himself was convicted of abuse of power, bribery, and defection. He received a fifteen-year sentence—relatively lenient, suggesting he had provided valuable testimony against his former patrons.
Bo Xilai's trial came last, in August 2013. He was sentenced to life in prison for bribery, abuse of power, and corruption. Unlike his wife, Bo fought the charges publicly, denying guilt and attacking witnesses. It made no difference to the outcome, but it provided rare drama in a system where defendants usually confess meekly and accept their fate.
The Meaning of the Scandal
The Wang Lijun incident was compared by some observers to the Lin Biao incident of 1971, when Mao Zedong's designated successor allegedly attempted a coup and died fleeing to the Soviet Union. Both events revealed the vicious infighting behind the façade of Communist Party unity. Both discredited the ideological movements they were associated with.
The "Chongqing model" of neo-Maoist populism was thoroughly discredited. The "red culture movement" that Bo had championed looked less like genuine ideology and more like a cynical power grab by a corrupt family willing to commit murder to protect their interests. Han Deqiang of the neo-leftist Utopia website called the scandal "a serious blow to the Chongqing Model."
For the Communist Party leadership, the scandal presented both danger and opportunity. The danger was obvious: a senior official had walked into an American consulate with evidence of high-level corruption and murder. The security implications were severe. Hu Jintao, the party general secretary, reportedly denounced Wang as "a traitor to the Communist Party and the nation."
But the opportunity was equally significant. Bo Xilai's downfall cleared the field for Xi Jinping's rise to paramount leader later that year. And the scandal provided a compelling justification for the anti-corruption campaign that would become the signature initiative of Xi's rule—a campaign that would take down hundreds of thousands of officials, including many of Xi's political rivals.
Whether the lesson of the Wang Lijun incident was about justice or power depends on your perspective. What is undeniable is that it revealed, in stark and sometimes absurd detail, the stakes of elite politics in China. A police chief who knew too much. A politician who reached too high. A British businessman who trusted the wrong people. And a phrase—vacation-style medical treatment—that captured the gap between what the government said and what everyone knew to be true.