Bo Xilai's Japanese history

By K.M. | DALIAN

BO XILAI is no stranger to risk. He was once among China’s highest ranking officials, and if Chinese prosecutors are to be believed, he played footloose with the law for years, engaging in bribery, corruption and abuse of power. His dramatic trial ended this week and he is likely soon to be found guilty. Prosecutors have called for “no leniency” to be shown in his sentencing.

When the ambitious Mr Bo took over as mayor of Dalian in 1993, he also took risks. Then a sleepy backwater, Dalian had few attributes he could use to boost his career. He seized on an idea that was potentially politically dangerous: heavily courting investment from the city’s former occupier, Japan.

Mr Bo set up special incentives for Japanese investors and built a development zone and high-tech park. Perhaps riskiest of all, he made himself available and became the public face of the effort to woo Japanese investment. If a president of a company from the top tier of Japan’s stock market visited Dalian, Mr Bo would meet him personally. The strategy worked. Thousands of Japanese companies have set up operations in Dalian, including many leading high-tech and software firms.

Confederates of Mr Bo from the early days say he knew that in order to move up the political ladder, he needed to get noticed with large-scale development and robust economic growth. Mr Bo believed Dalian’s long-standing knowledge of Japanese language and culture made the city a natural fit for Japanese businesses, particularly those in the high-tech sector.

He was unconcerned about the possible political ramifications of doing business with a former enemy—one still unwelcome to many after the occupation 50 years earlier. Mr Bo was determined to persuade Japan that Dalian was open for business, while Korean investment flowed to Qingdao, further south. “There was a lot of empty land and he was ordered to fill the buildings,” recalls a Japanese businessman who has worked in Dalian since Mr Bo’s tenure. “He desperately wanted to return to Beijing one day, so he decided to fill the buildings one-by-one with foreign investment,” he says.

Japan, less than two hours away by aeroplane, was a natural source of the investment Mr Bo wanted. Labour in China was cheaper and new infrastructure and construction projects promised cost-effective operations together with some of the comforts of home.

Those comforts went beyond business. Even today, Dalian is a weekend getaway for Japanese businessmen who want to play golf at one of the seaside city’s luxury resorts and to while away the evenings with pretty local girls at the many Japanese-style karaoke parlours. It is an open secret that many Japanese businessmen have local long-term girlfriends in Dalian.

Breakfast at Dalian’s Ramada Plaza Inn might leave a casual guest confused about geography. This is not Japan; it only feels that way. The tables are full of Japanese businessmen, quietly eating their morning noodles or chatting with colleagues about business deals. The service staff, all of whom speak Japanese, stand back from the tables, avoiding the ubiquitous hover of Chinese restaurants. But the Ramada Plaza Inn is not an isolated pocket in Dalian; many establishments cater to Japanese tastes and the entire city remains a major draw for Japanese businesses and pleasure-seekers.

Dalian’s relationship with Japan began violently, as Japan forged its way toward creating a new nation with territory in China. For 40 years until 1945, Japan controlled the city, using it as the main trading port between China and Japan. The Soviet Union then took over for five years before turning it back over to China, but those long-standing links with Japan left a legacy in Dalian.

It was not until the early 1990s and the arrival of Mr Bo that the city figured out how to put those links to use. Intriguingly, Dalian’s Japanese vibe has not made it a target during the many anti-Japan protests in China in recent years. Today, foreign investment accounts for a large share of Dalian’s GDP. In addition to Japanese firms such as Canon, Toshiba and Mitsubishi, global giants like Intel have also set up shop here.

Mr Bo left as Dalian’s mayor in 2000, but kept close ties to the city as governor of Liaoning province (where Dalian is located), as commerce minister and even later, as party secretary in far-off Chongqing. In his trial, the charges against him dated back to his Dalian days, in particular the accusation that plastics mogul and billionaire developer Xu Ming bribed him. The two-storey headquarters of Mr Xu’s Dalian Shide Group now sits vacant, his corner office empty of all but some scattered paperwork and a football jersey.

Mr Bo’s legacy of bringing Japanese investors back to Japan does remain. But some here are wary of the city’s new leadership, saying the current mayor, Li Wancai, “doesn’t meet with anyone,” and that rising costs do not help matters.

Does all this mean Mr Bo would have been a lone pro-Japan force in China’s leadership had he escaped his purge and risen to higher power? Not likely, former associates of Mr Bo say. The man is cunning and politically calculating, not necessarily pro-Japan. Had he risen higher, “there is a strong chance he might have decided to become strict with Japan,” says the Japanese businessman.

(Photo credit: STR/AFP)