Comeuppance Chinese-style: not a good year for snakes
Review of the Chinese year, Part 3: how the rich and powerful got a taste of their own medicine

A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
Thank you for signing up to TheWeek. You will receive a verification email shortly.
There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again.
SHANGHAI – As China’s income disparity grows at a venemous pace, those with a sense of entitlement appear just as capable of avarice, arrogance and indifference to the suffering of others as their counterparts in the West.
The most high-profile among the rich and powerful to make the headlines in the Year of the Snake were Bo Xilai, the populist politician, and Li Tianyi, the 17-year-old son of two household-name singers from the People’s Liberation Army.
Controversial, larger-than-life Bo was obviously going down. Though once considered untouchable as a “princeling” son of a Communist Party elder, his high-handed policies, the suspended death sentence handed to his wife in 2012 for the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood, and the notorious Wang Lijun incident, in which Bo’s top lieutenant sought asylum in a United States consulate, were too much to bear. Bo was found guilty of corruption and sentenced to life imprisonment in September.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Young Li’s case was less clear-cut, and many members of the jaundiced public half-expected him to be acquitted for taking part in the gang rape of a woman in the capital Beijing. Yet Li was sent down for 10 years, despite his powerful parents’ connections and machinations.
Such noteworthy cases aside, the Year of the Snake was remarkable for widespread outrage in the media at even petty injustices. What’s more, perhaps fearing the masses’ bubbling resentment, the privileged were even willing to throw a few of their own to the laobaixing - literally, “the old hundred names”, but essentially “the “common people” - for minor infringements of conduct or morality.
In August, for example, on a particularly scorching day in Henan province, two Chinese officials felt the chilly hand of shared discontent when, having knocked down a woman with their government car, they refused to offer assistance. A mob soon surrounded the blood-spattered vehicle in which the pair remained, laughing and chatting. “They were afraid of the heat,” a witness told the Dahe Daily.
Eventually, after a half-hour stand-off, one of the smartly dressed bigwigs deemed to step out of his air-conditioned hideaway. Did he rush to the aid of the injured pedestrian? Nope. He turned on his heels and fled. (The pair – from the local Justice Bureau, of all things – were disciplined.)
In September, the Shanghai Daily reported the case of a Hebei province official who was caught on video nonchalantly scoffing lobster, puffing on premium-brand cigarettes and knocking back expensive rice wine at a banquet costing “tens of thousands of Yuan” (thousand of pounds sterling) while he poured scorn on the laobaixing for their “disgusting and shameful manners”. (Fired!)
In November, the Beijing News told of Hunan province officials who had attempted to force away a petitioner – a cane-carrying citizen suffering from cancer – from a provincial government building. When the man’s wife had threatened to take photos, the officials posed cheerily for her camera alongside the frail and terrified petitioner, flashing V for victory signs and grinning. (Current employment status unknown.)
Also in November, the state-run Xinhua news agency distributed a photograph – lifted from China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo – of an official taking a ride on a lowly villager’s back (a misguided move that he might have saved for the coming Year of the Horse) because he didn't want to ruin his “high-end” shoes while visiting flood victims in Zhejiang province. (Sacked!)
Despite the authorities’ apparent crackdown on officials who get above their station, it should be noted that taking justice into one’s own hands is still a perilous game for China’s long-suffering laobaixing.
Take the case of anti-corruption activist Xu Zhiyong, founder of the grass-roots New Citizen Movement which promotes the limiting of unbridled official power. Earlier this week, Xu was convicted of “gathering crowds to disrupt public order”. He did not have a government position - and therefore could not be fired. Instead, he was sentenced to four years.
This article concludes Gary Jones’s three-part review of the Chinese Year of the Snake. Read Part One and Part Two here.
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.
Sign up to our 10 Things You Need to Know Today newsletter
A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
-
Is Donald Trump finished in New York?
Today's Big Question How the former president's fraud ruling could ruin him in the city that made him famous
By Rafi Schwartz Published
-
Windmill whales
Cartoons
By The Week Staff Published
-
Why the FTC antitrust lawsuit against Amazon is so consequential
Talking Point While it's not the first case the federal agency brought against the company, it might be the biggest challenge yet
By Theara Coleman Published
-
Drug could allow you to 'grow new teeth'
Tall Tales And other stories from the stranger side of life
By Chas Newkey-Burden Published
-
Woman reunited with egg she signed in 1951
It Wasn't All Bad Good news stories from the past seven days
By The Week Staff Published
-
10 things you need to know today: September 16, 2023
Daily Briefing Ripple effects seen throughout auto industry as UAW strikes, Lee expected to bring flooding and storm winds to New England, and more
By Justin Klawans Published
-
American rescued after 12 days in Turkish cave
It wasn't all bad Good news stories from the past seven days
By The Week Staff Published
-
What Mexico’s first female president might mean for the ‘femicide nation’
feature The Latin American country is grappling with misogynist crime amid a backdrop of progress for women in politics
By Rebekah Evans Published
-
Ukrainian military has ‘shown how the Russian army can be beaten’
Talking Point Recent Ukrainian frontline advances may offer hope for its counter-offensive
By The Week Staff Published
-
More than 2,000 dead following massive earthquake in Morocco
Speed Read
By Justin Klawans Published
-
Protests in Syria: could they bring down the Assad regime?
Talking Point Threat to power grows amid poverty, inflation and ‘botched’ response to earthquake
By The Week Staff Published