The urge to purge

China can learn from Russia on political martyrs

Bo Xilai is on trial but China's political system is in the dock. The purge of the disgraced Chongqing party chief has shone a spotlight on the antics of China's over-entitled elite. The case echoes the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky eight years ago. The risk for the regime is that Bo, like the jailed Russian oil magnate, becomes an enduring embodiment of the system's failings.

Bo's trial for bribery, graft and abuse of power hasn't yet succeeded in making him look like a villain. But it has at least opened a window on the lifestyles of the "one per cent". Allegations of the Bos' lavish lifestyle, and the trust companies and shadow directors they used to spirit money overseas, are damning - but no one in China or elsewhere will assume theirs was the only privileged family to bask in such illicit comfort.

Bo cannot be acquitted. Like in Khodorkovsky's trial, the verdict is pre-ordained because the country's rulers have decided to make a case. The Russian oligarch had openly challenged prime minister Vladimir Putin over Russia's endemic corruption before he was arrested in 2003; Bo's populist politics challenged the regime's cult of anti-personality. China also has less to lose from putting Bo away. Foreign investors winced at the expropriation of Khodorkovsky's oil company, Yukos, but Bo will find few overseas supporters.

The big question is whether Bo could stage a political comeback. There too, China has an advantage over Russia. The federation's pockets of freedom of expression have enabled Khodorkovsky to maintain a dialogue with the media. In China, political prisoners can disappear from public view. Bo is also 64, fourteen years older than Khodorkovsky. Assuming he spends at least the next 20 years behind bars, his only hope of revival is as a political symbol.

Bo's future significance depends on the ability of China's new leaders to abide by their promise to make citizens better off. Russia's current problems show that Putin has missed that opportunity. If China's ruling party can make its citizens prosperous and reduce inequality, silencing high-level dissent will look like an acceptable cost a decade from now. If not, Bo's story may not end with his impending guilty verdict.