The Chongqing gang trials were a series of triad-busting trials in the city of Chongqing that began in October 2009 and concluded in 2011. Carried out under the auspices of municipal Communist Party chief Bo Xilai and police chief Wang Lijun, a total of 4,781 suspects were arrested, including 19 suspected crime bosses, hundreds of triad members, and a number of allegedly corrupt police, government and Communist party officials, including six district police chiefs and the city’s former deputy police commissioner, Wen Qiang. Time described it as “China’s trial of the 21st century”. The crackdown is believed to be the largest of its kind in the history of the People’s Republic of China.
China’s trial of the 21st century. Not since Mao Zedong’s wife and her fellow members of the reviled Gang of Four were tried in 1980 has a courtroom trial so captured the attention of the nation. For one thing, there’s the sheer scale of the operation that brought more than 30 defendants to court this week: a crackdown on the alliance of criminal gangs and their corrupt official collaborators who have terrorized a huge metropolis for years. Thousands of suspects were questioned, some 1,500 were arrested, bribes in the tens of millions of renminbi were revealed and nearly a quarter of the city’s police force was devoted to the ongoing investigation. Even more astonishing — almost unprecedented — is the fact that so many senior police officers and government officials are on trial, virtually all of them stalwart members of the ruling Communist Party.
And what did Bo get for outing this corruption?
Bo was considered a likely candidate for promotion to the elite Politburo Standing Committee in 18th Party Congress in 2012. His political fortunes came to an abrupt end following the Wang Lijun incident, in which his top lieutenant and police chief sought asylum at the American consulate in Chengdu. Wang claimed to have information about the involvement of Bo Xilai and his wife Gu Kailai in the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood, who allegedly had close financial ties to the two.
In the fallout, Bo was removed as the party chief of Chongqing and lost his seat on the Politburo. He was later stripped of all his positions and lost his seat at the National People’s Congress, and was eventually expelled from the party. In 2013, Bo was found guilty of corruption, stripped of all his assets, and sentenced to life imprisonment. He is incarcerated at Qincheng Prison.