Decentralization in China: Lessons from Gu Kailai

Gu Kailai, wife of Bo Xilai, a former rising star of the Chinese Communist Party, was sentenced to death with a two-year delay last Monday. After the announcement, the focus of the media was on how it was a foregone conclusion and speculations arose about when Bo himself will be charged and if so, what his likely sentence will be.

What’s interesting to me is that no one actually bothered to analyze something that is very much the norm in most countries but is different in China, especially when it comes to court cases; that is the location where Gu was charged. Generally, the accused is charged by the court in the jurisdiction where the alleged crime took place. But here, we have someone who allegedly committed the crime in Chongqing, but charged by the court in Hefei, Anhui, which is a totally different city and province altogether. Why is this so?

When I read the book entitled “The Party” by Richard McGregor, I found that this action has precedent in the case of Chen Liangyu, the former Party Secretary of Shanghai who was charged in 2008. Chen was charged in Changchun, Jilin, also a totally different city and province from the alleged crime. The explanation given in the book was that Changchun was far away from Shanghai and that Shanghai judges could not be trusted to follow Beijing’s order. If this is indeed true, then Beijing has valid reasons for assigning the court in Hefei to charge Gu.

However, I have not brought up this observation simply to explain Beijing’s decision. Rather, what I want to say is that decentralization in China has reached a level where the perception that Beijing still has a strong grip on whatever that is going on in the country is no longer true. The system has been structured in such a way that the highest position in a specific region has a say in almost everything that goes on that he/she is effectively the “ruler” of that fiefdom, up to the point that it is beyond the control of Beijing. Isn’t it ironic for a Government who likes to portray that it has everything under control?