A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel Read online

  On January 30, Bo called a few senior municipal leaders for an emergency meeting and declared his intention to sack Wang. However, Huang Qifan, the mayor of Chongqing, dissented on the grounds that firing the police chief of Chongqing, the largest city under the direct administration of the central government, needed approval from the Ministry of Public Security. Bo ignored his advice and responded angrily that he knew how to handle Beijing.

  On January 31, Wang was informed that his Tieling friends had been convicted—the former Tieling police chief was sentenced to twelve years in jail on corruption charges and the court confiscated 9.8 million yuan. Two of his former colleagues received sixteen and fourteen years, respectively.

  The following afternoon, Bo convened an expanded meeting attended by members of the standing committee of the Municipal Communist Party, and announced that Wang would leave the public security bureau but would stay on as deputy mayor. Bo explained that Wang needed to become familiar with other areas of the government so he could be ready for more challenging tasks ahead; those at the meeting speculated that Wang was the subject of a corruption-related investigation.

  On February 2, the city announced Wang’s job change to members of the police department. Concurrently, Bo Xilai probed four of the police officers who had been assigned to work on the Neil Heywood case. Court documents said Bo forced the investigators to destroy evidence relating to Gu Kailai’s involvement in Heywood’s death and sign confessions stating that Wang Lijun had made false allegations against Bo’s wife. Three investigators cooperated and wrote allegiance letters. But Wang Pengfei refused to hand over the blood sample that Wang Lijun had drawn from Heywood’s body before his cremation and managed to transport the sample to Beijing, storing it in a friend’s refrigerator. When Bo found out, he kidnapped Wang Pengfei and detained him for nearly a month.

  Also in early February, Bo ordered the detention of three of Wang’s personal assistants, including his driver, for secret interrogations. They told Bo about Wang’s secret tapings of both Bo’s private conversations and his numerous rendezvous with young women. Bo realized that Wang had been conspiring against him and he put Wang under surveillance.

  On February 4, a journalist with Southern Weekend got in touch with Wang, seeking to confirm the rumor that he was under investigation. Wang responded tersely, “I’m still free.” When the reporter asked if it was true that his driver had been arrested, Wang snapped before hanging up, “Let them arrest anyone they want.”

  Following the detention of his personal assistants, Wang instructed a close confidante to write and sign with the person’s real name a letter to the commission and the Politburo, reporting on Bo’s connection to the Heywood murder and Bo’s past transfers of money overseas, according to a source at the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. Under normal circumstances, the majority of the letters to the commission are sent anonymously. However, Wang understood that a letter signed with a real name carried more weight and credibility, and could easily attract attention. After the letter was completed, he sent it via express mail to Beijing.

  Wang also planned to travel to Beijing and seek meetings with either Zhou Yongkang or Li Keqiang, both Politburo Standing Committee members. There is no verification of whether Wang got to meet either of them. But a source inside the Public Security Ministry indicated that some of Wang’s friends in Beijing dissuaded him from pressing for the meetings. They warned Wang that Bo had a vast network of powerful supporters and he was untouchable. If Bo found out about Wang’s petition, Wang could disappear without a trace, like the people he himself had secretly imprisoned in the past. An article in the Hong Kong–based Wai Can magazine maintained that one of Bo’s opponents in Beijing might have encouraged or given tacit approval to Wang’s escape to the US Consulate: creating an international incident would be an effective way, perhaps the only way, to shake up Bo Xilai and save his own life. This article, whose claims have not been substantiated, highlighted what one analyst said: “A sad reality in China—unless a citizen enlists the help of Western powers, the system cannot protect him.”

  As Wang contemplated his next move, Bo Xilai plotted to have Wang killed, at least according to an official in Chongqing: Bo’s aides designed three alternative plans to get rid of Wang. In the first, Wang would die a martyr’s death—Bo Xilai would have him shot to death, making it look as though Wang was killed by a criminal organization that had “retaliated” against Wang’s tough anticrime initiatives. In the second, Wang would die as a corrupt official who “killed himself” after the city launched an investigation into his personal finances. In the third, Wang would commit suicide due to severe depression from job-related stress. Of the three options, the third one allegedly gained the most votes.

  Suicide from depression is common among leaders at all levels of the Chinese government. The Hong Kong–based Oriental Daily said more than 120 officials killed themselves while under investigation on corruption-related charges in 2003 alone. Ai Weiwei, the prominent Chinese artist and dissident, questioned the suicide phenomena. In a 2009 blog, Ai wrote, “Officials dying during investigations left no wills. The government sees no need to publicize the will or to conduct an autopsy. They always rule out homicide. Since there are so many gray areas, the circumstances leading to the deaths are murky.”

  Wang himself was very familiar with the practice of using mental disorder to get rid of political opponents. Human rights organizations claim that more than 1,300 people were locked up in mental institutions during Wang’s reign. Although some detainees were religious activists or political dissidents, many were ordinary residents who had made negative comments on the Internet about Bo’s anticrime initiatives or public welfare projects.

  On February 4, a website posted an unnamed “doctor’s diagnosis” of Wang’s mental condition at a hospital attached to the Chongqing No. 3 Military Medical University. In the document, the doctor wrote that Wang had complained about “tremendous stress at work and long-term sleep deprivation” since 2011. He had to remain alert all the time and didn’t dare sleep with the lights off. The doctor examined Wang and noticed he was lethargic and sometimes lacked coherence in his conversations. The diagnosis was severe depression. The document, dated February 4, two days after his removal, had neither a doctor’s signature nor a file number. A day later, officials at the hospital openly denied the existence of such a diagnosis.

  The hospital’s denial did nothing to stop the speculation. During an interview, Su Tiecheng, a retired historian and the son of a Chinese military general, was quoted as saying:

  Based on reliable information I have obtained from Chongqing, the real reason for removing him from his position was his mental illness. . . . As the police chief of Chongqing, he has been under a lot of pressure and has received many death threats. He couldn’t sleep for days. This lasted for quite a while. When he had a cold or fever, he refused to take the medicine that doctors prescribed for fear that he could be poisoned. He said frequently that people around him want to kill him. He sometimes became suspicious when he saw a car with an unfamiliar license plate—thinking they were there to follow and assassinate him. At one time, he held a gun to his head for several minutes.

  Seeing these online reports about his mental illness, Wang was said to fear for his life. He sensed that Bo was attempting to eliminate him by creating circumstances in which Wang’s death would be unremarkable. He had to act fast and wisely to protect himself.

  US CONSULATE UNDER SIEGE

  SUN TZU, the ancient Chinese military general and strategist, once advised, “Of the thirty-six top stratagems, fleeing is the best.” However, no matter where he ran in the vast country, Wang knew he would be caught. Bo had already ordered a watch on airports and railway stations. To save himself, and to turn the tables on Bo, he started to consider the foreign consulates in Chengdu.

  Ironically, escaping to foreign embassies and consulates is a time-honored tradition in China, for both the persecuted and the persecut
or. In the early days of the Communist movement in China, many leaders, who fiercely repudiated Western colonialists, constantly ran to the English and French concessions for help when they were being hunted by the Nationalist government. In most cases, asylum seekers succeeded because authorities were afraid of offending the Western powers with direct intervention.

  After the Communists took over China in 1949, most Western democratic countries severed diplomatic ties with Beijing, and none existed except through back channels until China entered the United Nations and President Richard Nixon visited Beijing in the early 1970s. In the absence of foreign embassies and consulates, dissidents and those who had been persecuted during the Cultural Revolution had only one escape route, Hong Kong, which was British controlled and hosted foreign consulates from around the globe. But there was no guarantee of sanctuary. Many caught by the British were sent back to China. Ma Sicong, a famous violinist, escaped to the West with the help of the US Consulate in Hong Kong after his family was tortured by the Red Guards in 1967. One year later, Shen Yuan, a scholar in Beijing, disguised himself as an African and sneaked into the embassy of the Soviet Union, which had broken up with China in the early 1960s when Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Nikita Khrushchev openly clashed over their interpretations of the Marxist ideology. The Soviet Embassy turned Shen over to the Chinese government, and Shen was executed.

  On June 5, 1989, the day after the Chinese government brutally cracked down on protesters, a small but vocal prodemocracy movement drawn from Beijing’s universities demanded an end to corruption and the abuses of power by party cadres; many fearing reprisals sought asylum. Fang Lizhi, an astrophysicist and vocal critic of the government, entered the US Embassy in Beijing and sought asylum for fear of political reprisal. But Fang’s request was initially turned down. US officials feared that granting asylum to those on the Chinese government’s most wanted list could complicate US–China relations. At the urging of senior officials at the State Department and the White House, the embassy changed its initial decision and granted Fang’s request. Fang and his wife remained in the US Embassy for more than a year before they were allowed to leave China.

  The US Embassy and its consulates are considered the last resort for political dissidents who face arrest and imprisonment from officials such as Wang. The dissidents believed that the US government had the clout to resist Chinese pressure and any such attempts could also trigger international media attention. Nobody expected that Wang would seek asylum with the Americans.

  Over the years, Wang regularly issued harsh statements against the US and regularly persecuted pro-democracy activists in Chongqing. In October 2011, he referred to the US contemptuously as a country without history or friends, and strongly condemned those who betrayed their country, their (Communist) faith, and ethnicity.

  However, in private, Wang had a secret fascination with the US. He displayed an MBA certificate from a US university in his office, even though the university was an unlicensed educational institution. In addition, a police officer in Tieling told the Chinese state media recently that Wang had harbored ideas of seeking asylum in the US Consulate in 1999, when he served as police chief of Tieling. At that time, he was facing two lawsuits from local residents. Several colleagues, including a close friend, had written multiple letters to Beijing, accusing him of using torture to extract confessions. The frustrated Wang Lijun pouted to his friends, “This country is hopeless. I want to seek asylum at the US Consulate.”

  That probably explained why Wang Lijun thought of the US Consulate again twelve years later. The timing couldn’t have been better. Vice President Xi Jinping would be visiting the US within days and Wang figured the escape would attract major media attention to his case. With his flair for drama, Wang wanted a grand exit. Besides, he had already attempted—without success—to contact the British Consulate in Guangzhou in November 2011 to inform them of Neil Heywood’s murder. He believed he would have a better chance at the US Consulate because he could provide valuable information to the US government.

  On the morning of February 6, Wang phoned a close friend, Wang Pengfei, a district police chief. Pengfei had attended the prestigious China Criminal Police University and, on graduation, was assigned a job in Tieling. Under Wang’s tutelage, Pengfei rose in the ranks and established himself as a top expert in criminal investigation. In 2011, Wang brought him to Chongqing to head the criminal investigation unit. It is not clear whether Wang ever briefed Pengfei on his escape plan. After Wang’s defection, Bo kidnapped Pengfei, trying to find out what type of information Wang had delivered to the US Consulate.

  A source in Beijing said Wang asked Pengfei to arrange a driver and an SUV, and to bring three new cell phones. In China, it is common for an official to carry multiple phones for different functions: for example, one specifically for the boss, one for the family, and one for his mistress and to keep in touch with sensitive contacts.

  Wang wanted the phones for a very specific purpose. He typed up different messages exposing Bo’s role in Heywood’s death and stored them in each phone. In the event that his escape plan failed and he was abruptly killed, Wang urged his friend to give each phone to a trusted individual, who would release the messages at different times in the following week. A reporter with the Southern Metropolis Daily received a phone note from Wang three days after his defection that said, “Bo Xilai and his wife are connected with the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood.”

  Wang left with the driver Pengfei provided, and headed directly to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. On the highway, he phoned a deputy director of the Sichuan provincial public security, saying that he needed a face-to-face meeting to discuss something very important. The deputy director drove to the highway exit to greet Wang. The two had lunch and Wang claimed he had been asked to brief American officials at the consulate about an urgent joint US–China antiterrorism program. Because he hadn’t set up an appointment, Wang asked if the deputy director, a designated liaison with the US Consulate, could make the connection. The deputy director willingly obliged and phoned the consulate. At 2:30 P.M., Wang had walked into the American mission on Consulate Road in Chengdu. Consul General Peter Haymond was out of town. Two senior consulate officials greeted Wang. Without realizing the political storm that was about to erupt around them, US diplomats took Wang to the consulate’s library rather than a safe room designed to block Chinese surveillance. The initial conversation centered on promoting further exchanges on antiterrorism initiatives. Then the political asylum request came up.

  Western media and anonymous sources in Beijing and Chongqing provided more details. Newsweek reported:

  The American ambassador Gary Locke was at an afternoon meeting in Beijing, away from his office at the American Embassy, when he received a cryptic email on his BlackBerry: “Return to the embassy’s secure communications area immediately.” The ambassador rushed back. It was Feb. 6, and Locke was stunned to learn that a senior Chinese policeman had arrived at the U.S. Consulate in the southwestern city of Chengdu, telling officials there that he wanted to go to the U.S. because he feared for his life.

  Wang Lijun, known as the Eliot Ness of China for his ruthless campaign against organized crime, told a riveting story of how his one-time mentor, a local party secretary by the name of Bo Xilai, was out to kill him because he knew too much about the alleged poisoning and murder of a British businessman, Neil Heywood, who had known Bo and his wife. It was “fascinating, eye-popping revelations,” Locke said. “My first reaction was ‘oh, my God,’ I mean ‘OH, MY GOD!’”

  Bill Gertz with the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative online news service in the US, quoted a US official as saying that Wang had divulged information about the power struggle within the Politburo Standing Committee. Wang claimed that Zhou Yongkang and Bo Xilai had conspired to “upset the smooth succession of Xi Jinping,” who was designated to be the party general secretary later in the year.

  According to the New York Times, Wa
ng sounded “agitated” and “incoherent” during the conversations, and “the American diplomats who oversaw his brief, bizarre stay pre-empted any formal application for asylum because of the difficulties of spiriting him out of the country and questions about his eligibility.”

  The US State Department and the White House might have underestimated the potential impact of Wang’s action, mistakenly thinking that he was a mere regional official and that the information he offered held little value. More important, it happened a week before Xi Jinping’s much-publicized visit to the US. “Granting asylum to Mr. Wang could have soured or scuttled Mr. Xi’s trip,” said the New York Times.

  As a courtesy, a source said that US officials notified the Chinese Foreign Ministry of Wang’s presence at the US Consulate.

  In the end, Wang agreed that the best option was to hand himself over to authorities in Beijing. Consulate officials did allow Wang to use his phone to contact his friends in Beijing so he wouldn’t end up in the hands of Bo Xilai’s security forces. Wang reportedly got ahold of Zhou Yongkang, who informed Wang that a delegation had been dispatched from Beijing to meet him.

  A Chinese official briefed on Wang’s investigation claimed Wang had brought a suitcase containing documents detailing his own investigation of Neil Heywood’s murder and the Bo family’s attempts to transfer assets overseas. On learning his asylum request would not be granted, the paper said Wang did not hand over the documents. However, the Wall Street Journal, which quoted US officials who witnessed what had happened, reported that Wang might not have brought the documents. Before he left the consulate, Wang “slipped US diplomats the cell phone number of an accomplice” who could help produce the evidence about Heywood’s murder:

  The US handed the cell phone number over to British diplomats and gave them instructions on how to track down the information from Wang’s mysterious accomplice. The instructions included setting up an e-mail account under a designated name with a popular Chinese e-mail and messaging service. The British set up the account and texted the cell phone number. People involved gave conflicting accounts of the timing and whether the accomplice responded. For reasons that are unclear, the British never received the promised documents.