TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Bo Xilai, the son of a CCP official from when the CCP was still fighting the KMT for control of China, was removed from his position as party chief of Chongqing for a scandal surrounding his police chief. Here’s more on what happened. (It’s worth reading if you’re interested, by the way. It’s a weird story.)

Bo was, until this scandal, considered not just a rising star in Chinese politics, but almost guaranteed a seat on China’s politburo. Bo’s politics are, even by Chinese standards, far to the left—using his position, he favored state-owned enterprises and tried to create a revival of communist culture by promoting Mao quotations, singing “red” songs (including some from the Cultural Revolution), and by encouraging youth to work in the countryside. His rise in Chinese politics was seen as a possible sign that China’s next generation of leaders could move away from the relatively liberal views of current Premier Wen Jiabao and the country’s general progression toward a more free economy since Deng Xiaoping. His removal makes that shift less likely.

His fall also provides a look into China’s opaque political system that we rarely get. The Economist writes:

Welcome, too, is the little window the affair opens into the corrupt, fratricidal ways of party politics. Mr Bo’s downfall was precipitated by the flight to an American consulate of Wang Lijun, his former police chief and right hand in the anti-mafia drive. Mr Wang is now under investigation in China. Mr Bo, too, may soon find himself answering awkward questions. That Chongqing’s dirty linen was aired in front of American diplomats on his watch may matter more than the dirt itself. But his sacking will not herald a new era in which party and government officials are to account for their actions. Crimes and misdemeanours, like ideology, are merely weapons in a power struggle. Winners can still get away with it.

China’s leaders like to pretend that the party is a singular thing, and that China’s politics are very orderly and harmonious. But they’re far from it. Clausewitz wrote that war is the continuation of politics by other means, but in China, threats, harassment, house arrest, being jailed and being killed are all a part of political struggles within the party. Because the party has primary power at the expense of a civil system, and political struggles happen behind closed doors, those struggles inevitably involve the rest of society. When there is no transparent system for transferring political power nor the rule of law enforced by an independent judicial system, everything in society is, necessarily, political.