[Zhang Fei]

Blog commenter jk6411 at the Marmot's Hole was kind enough to translate this Korean language news item for me. Bottom line is that the facade of lockstep agreement in dictatorships is just that - a facade.

[the invisib1e hand]

Armed standoff between Wen Jiabao's and Zhou Yongkang's troops over Bo Xilai's subordinate

well, that explains it.

[mojito]

So, there was an armed standoff at the Zongnanhai leadership “compound” in Beijing between the supporters of Bo and his semi-private militia and those of Wen and the PLA palace guard.

So, essentially those coup rumors on Chinese blogs that the Party went to so much trouble to suppress were true, even though it seems that the Bo supporters stood down before any actual shooting erupted.

If Bo's supporters can pull a stunt like this in Beijing, just imagine what they might be capable of in Chongqing.

[mojito]

Hadn't seen this before:

“On the day that former Chongqing boss Bo Xilai was removed from all his Chinese Communist Party posts and his wife announced to be a murder suspect, a mob of at least 10,000 people took over the streets of one of the municipality's distant districts.

The crowds hurled rocks at security officers and smashed or set fire to more than a dozen police cars before reinforcements arrived to lock things down.

The chaos was not sparked by Bo's dismissal. Instead, public anger had exploded about reductions in medical insurance and social security after the merger of two of Chongqing’s districts.”

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/23/2763762/in-bo-xilai-scandal-chinas-national.html

[386wt]

So... Xu’s on first?

[SampleMan]

Started reading this and all I could think was, “Xu’s on first?”

[Steely Tom]

This will be going in someone’s personnel jacket.

[Thunder90]

This is similar to the MVD and the Russian Army standoff of 1991.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Interesting Times for sure. (Which in and of itself appears to be a myth - apparently there is no such Chinese curse - “May you live in Interesting Times”).