China’s biggest political crisis in decades took a dramatic turn with the removal of one of the Communist Party’s biggest stars from his post and his wife’s arrest on suspicion of murder. Bo Xilai, the charismatic former party leader of Chongqing city, had been tipped for the very highest echelons of power in China until he was sacked from the post last month before being suspended from the Politburo on Tuesday. The announcement that he had been removed from the powerful 25-member Politburo was followed by the shock revelation that his wife was being investigated over the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood. Gu Kailai and Zhang Xiaojun, a medical orderly at Bo’s home, fell out with Heywood over “economic interests”, the state news agency Xinhua reported. Both are now under investigation for murder, while Bo Xilai is suspected of being involved in “serious discipline violations”, Xinhua said. In China, that usually refers to corruption. Analysts say the rare, public scandal has exposed deep rifts within the ruling party ahead of a once-in-a-decade leadership transition due to take place later this year. The People’s Daily newspaper, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, yesterday said Bo had “seriously violated the party discipline, causing damage to the cause and the image of the party and state”. The Xinhua dispatches came late on Tuesday just before midnight, confirming China’s biggest public party upheaval since a purge before the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. “It’s a dramatic event. We normally don’t get this kind of drama out of the Chinese leadership,” said Patrick Chovanec, professor at Beijing’s Tsinghua University. “It’s not just about corruption, it’s a major leadership battle over who is going to lead the country.” Before his downfall, Bo had been tipped to become a member of the party’s Standing Committee—the apex of political power in China—when seven of its nine members step down in the autumn. But the 62-year-old’s high-profile campaign and brutal onslaught on allegedly corrupt businessmen and officials, coupled with his “princeling” status as the son of a hero of China’s revolution, alienated many in the party. AFP