Wen Jiabao sees Bo’s downfall as a pivotal opportunity to pin his reformist colors high while the Communist Party is too divided to rein him in. He is reaching out to the Chinese public because the party is losing its monopoly on truth and internal roads to reform have long been blocked. Ironically, he is doing so by leading the public purging of a victim who has no hope of transparent justice, because the party to which he has devoted his life has never known any other way.
That last sentence was really a great kicker to an amazing article by John Garnaut in Foreign Policy entitled, “The Revenge of Wen Jiabao.” It seems kind of sadly cruel that Bo Xilai was purged and is probably being detained in some black prison somewhere.