Party notches up popularity points

THE picture was worth a thousand characters.

Bo Xilai stood in the court to hear his life sentence read out. On either side of him, at attention and towering over him: two policemen who made him look short.

Bo is more than 180cm tall. But the appearance was intended to diminish him in every way possible in the eyes of the great Chinese public. His police guards were not selected at random.

His hair was also seen to be greying. Yet the seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee - which Bo appeared on the verge of joining less than two years ago - including party general secretary Xi Jinping, 60, and Premier Li Keqiang, 58, have jet-black hair.

Is this the end of the road for Bo? He has 10 days to appeal against his conviction and sentence, and given his characteristic refusal to confess and throw himself at the court's - or, more pertinently, the Politburo's - mercy, as so many predecessors have done, it's highly likely he will take up that opportunity.

But he knows very well he would not succeed. After 10 years he may request parole. He will then be 74.

His life as a mover and shaker in the world's most populous country is now effectively over.

He will be tempted to throw any remaining caution to the wind during his appeal - which, the Communist Party leaders will be hoping against hope, is the last time he will appear in public.

He was not handed a death sentence.

Executing such an insider as Bo, the princeling son of Bo Yibo - a Red Army comrade of Mao Zedong and then one of the veteran "Eight Immortals" brought back into prominence under Deng Xiaoping - would have been shocking and even more destabilising.

But life was harsher than many expected.

The whole episode has been highly disruptive for the party at precisely the wrong time - when it was looking to entrench a more modern and personable team, led by Xi and Li, for the next decade.

China is today run by committee-men, and self-aggrandising Bo never fitted into this consensus-seeking template. His case, though, underlines how hard it is for the party to hold on to both its core themes, which often pull in opposite directions: striving for modernity through change, while rooting its legitimacy in its colourful Maoist past.

If party central had let Bo continue his Mao-channelling moves from his massive municipal base as party secretary in Chongqing, it would have signalled that the old Left was back as a power, ridiculing reformism as anti-Chinese because it was anti-Maoist.

Punishing him for corruption - a charge that could be made to stick, in the party-run courts, against virtually any cadre in the country - gives the leadership a chance to score a few popularity points for being prepared to sacrifice one of their own.