Claim president's phone bugged adds to swirl of Bo Xilai rumours

THE FOCUS of the scandal surrounding Bo Xilai, the former Communist Party chief of Chongqing, has moved back on to the layers of political intrigue around the case, after reports the purged leader bugged the phones of President Hu Jintao.

Mr Bo oversaw a wire-tapping network right across the municipality in southwest China, which began during his campaign against organised crime in Chongqing, the New York Times reported, citing “nearly a dozen people with party ties”.

With bugging and surveillance such a big part of the day-to-day business of the Chongqing government, it was unsurprising that the equipment should have been used to listen in on visiting leaders from Beijing. At the same time, it is unlikely that any senior Chinese leader would use the telephone to communicate any important information.

But the paper said that “operatives were caught intercepting a conversation between the office of Mr Hu and Liu Guanglei, a top party law-and-order official whom Mr Wang had replaced as police chief” last year.

A conversation between Minister of Supervision Ma Wen, who was visiting Chongqing, and Mr Hu himself was also monitored.

Mr Bo is being probed for serious violations of discipline, and wire-tapping has not come up as an issue. However, bugging has come up at various points during the swirl of rumour surrounding the Bo scandal.

Overseas Chinese websites have reported that the vice-president, Xi Jinping, who is expected to take over as supreme leader in the autumn, was bugged during a visit to Chongqing.

And several weeks ago there were online rumours that internal security chief Zhou Yongkang, who has been mentioned as an ally of Mr Bo, directed the surveillance of other Politburo members.

Surveillance is a fact of life in China – the internet is already tightly monitored, for example, but it’s a different story when the listening equipment is turned on the leadership itself, even on top leaders such as Mr Hu and Mr Xi. This will have been read by the ruling elite of the Politburo as a direct challenge to central authorities.

The news of the bugging incident gives a fascinating insight into the level of paranoia at senior levels of Chinese authority. It also provides a flashback to the fearful days of the cold war. Chairman Mao’s doctor, Li Zhisui, wrote of how party leaders bugged the Great Helmsman’s train to make sure they were not taken by surprise by policy shifts.

The main architect of the wire-tapping network was Mr Bo’s police chief, Wang Lijun, whose flight from Chongqing to the US consulate in Chengdu was the catalyst that started the whole scandal.

During his time in the US consulate he is believed to have revealed details about the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood, an associate of Mr Bo and his wife Gu Kailai.

The Chinese government subsequently obtained that information and now strongly suspect Ms Gu of involvement in Mr Heywood’s death in November.