A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel Read online

  A DEATH IN THE

  LUCKY HOLIDAY HOTEL

  A DEATH IN THE

  LUCKY

  HOLIDAY

  HOTEL

  Murder, Money,

  and an Epic Power Struggle

  in China

  PIN HO AND WENGUANG HUANG

  PUBLICAFFAIRS

  New York

  Copyright © 2013 by Pin Ho and Wenguang Huang.

  Published in the United States by PublicAffairs™, a Member of the Perseus Books Group

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address PublicAffairs, 250 West 57th Street, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10107.

  PublicAffairs books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the U.S. by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, call (800) 810–4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected].

  Book Design by Cynthia Young

  A record for the printed edition is available at the Library of Congress.

  ISBN 978-1-61039-274-7 (EB)

  First Edition

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  CONTENTS

  Authors’ Note

  Cast of Characters

  Prologue

  PART I: The Fate of a Kuli

  The Stranger’s Phone Call

  The Unexpected Visitor

  “The Iron Blooded Police Spirit”

  “Professor Wang Lijun”

  The Slap in the Face

  US Consulate Under Siege

  “Inviting the Gentleman to the Urn”

  PART II: The Princelings

  Sitting Tight on the Fishing Boat

  “Hello, Dear, It’s Your Wife Calling”

  The Red Concentration Camp

  The Princelings

  “The City of Double Happiness”

  The Final Push

  The Dismissal

  Like Father, Like Son

  Secret Investigation

  PART III: Poisonous Water

  The Girl Butcher

  A Death at the Lucky Holiday Hotel

  The Non-Trial of the Century

  Legal Experts Ask: Did Gu Kailai Kill Neil Heywood?

  An Insidious Man

  From China with Love

  Poisonous Water

  PART IV: The Victor Is King and the Loser a Bandit

  The Resilient Loser: China’s Security Czar

  The Billionaire Loser: Bo Xilai’s Secret Wallet

  The Unexpected Loser: “People’s Premier” or the “King of Showbiz”?

  Hu Is a Loser: The President and his Chief of Staff

  The Ultimate Loser: “We’ll Never Allow him to Walk Out Alive”

  The Backstage Winner: Long Live the King Father

  The Winner Is . . . “Hail to the New Chief”

  Index

  AUTHORS’ NOTE

  This book represents the joint efforts of Ho Pin and Wenguang Huang, who have teamed up to relate a tale of scandal, intrigue, and murder in Chongqing—a tale that has had profound repercussions on China and the world. For the sake of clear and compelling storytelling, however, we have chosen to narrate the story using the voice of Ho Pin—a commentator on Chinese politics, and a magazine/book/website publisher who broke the news about several pivotal events in the Bo Xilai scandal and subsequently, as the scandal unraveled, became part of this sprawling story.

  We intend this book to be an insider’s take on a political murder that set off a dramatic, behind-the-scenes fight for power at the highest echelons. It has incorporated a significant amount of previously unpublished information as well as the views of many insiders who rarely, if ever, talk publicly to the press and the public. To research the book, we interviewed more than fifty current and former Chinese government officials, well-connected businesspeople, veteran political analysts, and independent journalists—all of whom shared their knowledge about the Bo Xilai case and the inner workings of the Communist Party. Many chose to remain anonymous for fear of political reprisal. In addition to these interviews, we followed the daily postings on Weibo—China’s version of Twitter—and various articles posted on overseas Chinese language websites that escaped government censorship and unveiled critical information at the peak of the scandal. Later, in order to get an on-the-ground experience of the locale for this political drama, Wenguang Huang, posing as a tourist, took a week-long trip to Chongqing in November 2012 to interview government officials, police officers, and ordinary people on the street. He also visited and photographed the hotel where British businessman Neil Heywood was killed. The fact-checking trip enabled us to get an exact sense of the drama and its impact locally and nationally.

  What has emerged from this endeavor, we hope, is the most comprehensive account of the Neil Heywood murder scandal that shocked and riveted the international community in 2012 as well as a stunning and unsettling portrait of the different intertwined interest groups and political factions within the Chinese Communist Party’s top decision-making body.

  It is not a pretty picture.

  Though, when appearing in public, China’s leaders present a uniform picture of total solidarity—an all-male group uniformly clad in dark suits, white shirts, and (often) red ties with dyed, jet-black hair—the group is anything but a solid, unified group of wise men presiding over the fate of roughly a fifth of the world’s population. There are fierce internal power struggles, pitting one political faction and economic interest group against another, massive amounts of official and non-official corruption, byzantine intrigues, and hardball tactics that stop at nothing. The rules of engagement more closely resemble those of warring mafia families than anything else, with princeling tangling with princeling over turf and territory.

  And this time, there are some new ingredients in this Chinese hot-pot. In the past, the Communist Party monopolized the flow of information and political scandals were kept secret. The public didn’t learn about events until months, or years, later. However, as more Chinese are becoming fluent English readers, they use many different means to translate the foreign media reports and transmit them back to China via the Internet.

  Realizing that the public craved Chinese news from overseas, and considering Western media outlets to be more reliable sources of information than the state-controlled propaganda machine, the political and business elite as well as friends and relatives of senior Communist leaders have often used secret means to feed Western journalists and political analysts with “exclusives.” Some had their friends post banned information on Weibo. Thanks to these political insiders, the world was able to receive real-time coverage as the scandal unfolded, enabling the foreign media to create a small fissure in the secret maneuverings of the Communist Party. Many blog postings and overseas media reports were castigated by government as “vicious rumors,” but the majority of them proved to be close to the truth. The government official media, on the contrary, turned out to be the biggest rumormonger of all.

  However, the foreign media have also learned a valuable lesson from the Bo Xilai coverage. Knowing the challenges Western media face in obtaining news via regular channels, some political insiders, often with tacit approvals from the Communist leadership, manipulated the international media, leaking information that was a mélange of truth, lies
, and pure speculation to advance a specific political agenda. As a consequence, many media outlets, including Mingjing News (one of Ho Pin’s Chinese-language news sites), carried stories that subsequently proved to be inaccurate or wrong. For example, based on an insider’s tip, we posted a story that Bo Xilai’s trial would take place in October 2012 in the city of Changsha, but it never panned out. In addition, before Bo Xilai was officially charged, Western reporters, acting on tips from insiders, published lurid allegations against him, suggesting that the Bo Xilai case was a fight between reformists and an extreme and corrupt Maoist. As a consequence, the overseas media played a role, in a way that the state media could never have, in a massive government smear campaign against Bo.

  As more sources are becoming available in China, Western media organizations are better able to verify each story to improve accuracy and independence. Since this book was written over a period of six months, we were able to work with Chen Xiaoping, a US-based legal scholar and journalist, to check our sources in China, verify details, incorporate the most up-to-date information, and modify any inaccuracies that had occurred in earlier news reports. Despite these efforts, some errors and misjudgments may remain and we take responsibility for them. We hope that other writers, journalists, and historians who follow in our footsteps will be able to further clarify the historical record.

  At the time of this writing (January 2013), Bloomberg and the New York Times released a series of investigative reports that shed light on the family finances of senior Chinese leaders. With their aggressive coverage of China, Western media giants such as the Bloomberg, The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the Economist, The Financial Times, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, as well as Chinese-language media outlets operating outside of China, are directly influencing Chinese politics more than ever before. Their coverage is being filtered back to mainland China, forcing the government to respond and making events more transparent. We expect this will continue in the future. As different factions compete to leak information to the Western media and air their opponent’s dirty laundry, their actions may intensify power struggles in the short-term, but in the long-run will hasten changes within the Communist Party.

  Ho Pin and Wen Huang

  January 2013

  CAST OF CHARACTERS*

  Neil Heywood—Former British business consultant in China.

  Wang Lulu—Neil Heywood’s Chinese wife.

  Wang Lijun—Former police chief and deputy mayor of Chongqing.

  Guo Weiguo—Former deputy police chief of Chongqing.

  Bo Xilai (bo-shee-lai)—Former party chief of Chongqing and a Politburo member.

  Bo Yibo—Bo Xilai’s father and a revolutionary veteran who was a Politburo member and served as China’s vice premier before his death in 2007.

  Bo Guagua—Bo Xilai’s son, who now resides in the US.

  Gu Kailai—Bo Xilai’s wife and a former lawyer.

  Gu Jingsheng—Gu Kailai’s father and a former military general before his death in 2004.

  Fan Chengxiu—Gu Kailai’s mother and a retired Communist Party official.

  Li Danyu—Bo Xilai’s ex-wife and an army doctor.

  Wen Qiang—Former deputy police chief of Chongqing who was executed on corruption charges in 2010.

  Zhou Yongkang—Close ally of Bo Xilai and former member of the Politburo Standing Committee who was dubbed China’s security czar.

  Xu Ming (sh-yu-ming)—Billionaire businessman in the city of Dalian and close friend of Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai.

  Xi Jinping (shee-jeen-ping)—Princeling and current Communist Party general secretary and president of China.

  Xi Zhongxun—Xi Jinping’s father and a revolutionary veteran who was governor of Guangdong province before his death in 2002.

  Hu Jintao—Former Communist Party general secretary (2002–2012) and president of China (2003–2013).

  Ling Jihua—Hu Jintao’s former chief of staff and Bo Xilai’s “deep throat” who now heads the United Front Work Department.

  Wen Jiabao—Former premier of China (2003–2013).

  Jiang Zemin—Former Communist Party general secretary (1989–2002) and president of China (1993–2003).

  Li Keqiang—Current premier of China.

  _______

  * We follow the Chinese tradition by placing family names first.

  PROLOGUE

  AN ENGLISHMAN’S BODY was found in Room 1605 of the Nanshan Lijing Holiday Hotel, or Lucky Holiday Hotel. Nestled atop the densely-wooded South Mountain, the three-star resort is about eight kilometers from downtown Chongqing. The clear mountain air provides a welcome change from the smog-shrouded, fast-growing municipality of more than 30 million. Its secluded location overlooking the sprawling city that straddles the Yangtze River below makes it a popular venue for weddings, holiday parties, government conferences, and leadership retreats. In the spring and summer, the hotel accommodates tourists who visit the nearby botanical garden or worship in the Tushan Temple built around 700 CE.

  During the off-season month of November, the hotel compound looks eerily deserted. Inside the empty lobby of the main building, two thick wooden ceiling beams, painted in bright red, tower over a big glass fish tank. It feels like entering a gaudy Chinese restaurant. Two young female attendants staffing the registration desk reluctantly stop their computer games to greet guests who either arrive to check in or inquire about the special winter rates.

  The hotel registration shows that a lao wai, or foreigner, checked into a private villa suite on November 13, 2011. His name was Neil Heywood. He was forty-one, an Englishman with a British passport and a Beijing address. He was last seen with a middle-age Chinese woman who, before she left the suite, flipped on the door’s “Do Not Disturb” sign and told the villa supervisor not to bother the foreign guest because he’d had “too much to drink.”

  Two days later, the cleaning staff, noticing that the guest in Room 1605 had not stepped out of his room the whole time and suspecting something had gone awry, notified the villa supervisor. On receiving no answer to his knocks and calls, he opened the door and discovered the foreigner dead on his bed. The hotel’s general manager contacted the police.

  Wang Lijun, the police chief of Chongqing, was the first to show up at the scene with the vice chief of his criminal investigation team, whom government papers identified by his last name, Huang. After getting details from the hotel manager, villa supervisor, and cleaning staff and examining the room, Wang Lijun sent Huang away and assigned the case to four of his trusted senior police officers—his deputy police director, the chief of the criminal investigation section, the chief of technical detection, and the chief of the Shapingba District.

  The initial police report shows the investigative team interviewed the hotel staff, took a blood sample from the victim’s heart, and conducted a CT scan on the body. The next morning, the team declared that Heywood had experienced “sudden death after drinking alcohol” and reported the results to Wang Lijun, who later testified that he “did not oppose their conclusion.” Police located Heywood’s family in Beijing—he was married to Wang Lulu, a Chinese national, and had two children. Based on a British report several months later, Heywood’s mother in London was grief-stricken after receiving notice of her son’s death. Her husband, Heywood’s father, had just died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-three after drinks over dinner at their London home.

  The Chongqing Public Security Bureau persuaded Heywood’s family members to accept its conclusion on the cause of death and, with their approval, cremated Heywood’s body. No autopsy was conducted. Heywood’s friends said he was “not a serious drinker,” but neither the family nor the British Consulate raised any objections to the investigation and its conclusions.

  On November 18, three days after Heywood’s body was found, the case was closed. With so many foreigners living in China, Heywood’s death went largely unnoticed by the media and the public. But in Chinese mythology, the spirit of the dead does not di
ssolve if he or she has unfinished business in this world. The ghost lingers, clinging to its enemies, manipulating their minds, and causing havoc in their lives. So it would prove for those who had come into contact with the dead man from Room 1605, including the most elite members of the Chinese Communist Party. The crisis triggered by Heywood’s death reveals more about the scandalous state of corruption in China than any dissident or journalist could ever manage.

  PART I

  The Fate of a Kuli

  Kuli, pronounced “cool-lee,” is an ancient term referring to an official or police officer who relied on extreme means of torture and brutality to help his master maintain power.

  THE STRANGER’S PHONE CALL

  LUNAR NEW YEAR PREDICTIONS are taken seriously in China, if only in the hope that the coming year will be better than the one just passed. At midnight on January 23, 2012, Chinese people around the world ushered in the Year of the Dragon. Though the mythical creature symbolizes strength, power, and good fortune, many were wary of its fiery nature, which heralds volatility and change. “China will have some political surprises,” a newspaper in Hong Kong quoted a fortune-teller as saying. “In the second half of the year, a scandalous corruption case will be exposed in China. A number of high-ranking officials will be forced to step down. Some may be thrown behind bars, or even pass away.”

  “Political surprises” was a fairly safe bet and was glossed over amid the celebrations in mainland China, where the government-controlled media hyped up the dragon’s auspicious associations, such as “harmony” and “grand takeoff of the Chinese economy.” In private, many in the leadership would have shared the fortuneteller’s foreboding. The 18th Party Congress was scheduled for the fall, when a new generation of thoroughly vetted leaders who had won fierce power struggles would take over. Leadership transitions historically have been times of political intrigue and conspiracy, and during the past two decades a common and effective way to eliminate a challenger or political opponent was to link a rival with a corruption scandal. President Jiang Zemin employed the trick to consolidate his power, as did his successor, President Hu Jintao. In a one-party state such as China, jockeying for influence is a raw reality of the political system. There is nowhere else to go, so all fighting must be infighting. However, nobody, not even the fortune-teller, expected that the first political surprise of the new year would come even before the fifteen-day celebration was completed. And I was an unwitting messenger.