Former high-ranking politician Bo Xilai has been expelled from the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) and stripped off all his remaining leadership positions, China's official news agency Xinhua reported Tuesday.
"Comrade Bo Xilai is suspected of being involved in serious disciplinary violations," according to the Xinhua report which announced the decision by the central party leadership to suspend Bo from its top ranks.
A separate Xinhua report said Bo's wife Gu Kailai has been named as a suspect in the murder of British business consultant Neil Heywood last November, citing a dispute over unspecified "economic interests" between the two. The news agency added that Gu "has been transferred to judicial authorities on suspected crime of intentional homicide" of Heywood.
"Police set up a team to re-investigate the case of the British national Neil Heywood who was found dead in Chongqing. According to the reinvestigation results, the existing evidence indicates Heywood died of homicide, of which Gu Kailai and Zhang Xiaojun, an assistant in Bo's household, are highly suspected," the news agency said.
Britain welcomed the Chinese move to re-investigate the case, with Foreign Secretary William Hague saying: "The Chinese are doing as we asked them to do and we now look forward to seeing those investigations take place and in due course hearing the outcome of those investigations."
Last month, the CPC Central Committee sacked Bo as party secretary of the central Chinese city of Chongqing and replaced him with Zhang Dejiang, a North Korea-educated economist and Vice-Premier-in-charge of energy, telecommunications and transport sectors. However, Bo was not dropped from the 25-member CPC Central Committee then.
Bo's removal from the post of party secretary of Chongqing a day after Prime Minister Wen Jiabao obliquely criticized him in a live press conference in Beijing and called for "serious" reflection over a recent scandal involving him.
Bo's political future was marred by an episode involving his former police chief Wang Lijun, who suddenly appeared at the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu, about 350 kilometer from Chongqing, in early February. Wang reportedly spent a night in the Consulate and sought political asylum in the U.S.
Media reports at that time said Chinese security forces encircled the Consulate and took Wang to Beijing after he came out the embassy the following morning. Bo and Wang were close for a decade and it was Bo who brought the latter to Chongqing in 2008 to launch an operation against the city's mafia.
Earlier, Bo was widely expected to be elected as a member of the nine-member standing committee of the CPC Politburo, the innermost core of power, when the party adopts a once-in-a-decade leadership change. The latest developments indicate Bo's political career might be effectively finished.
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Market Analysis
June 19, 2026 16:46 ET Major central banks continued to dominate the economic news flow this week too, led by the Federal Reserve, as they announced their latest policy decisions. The Federal Reserve policy session was in focus as it was the first to be led by the new chief Kevin Warsh. In Europe, central banks of the U.K. and Switzerland announced their rate decisions. In Asia, the Bank of Japan drew attention for its policy moves, while data out of China threw some light on the state of the economy.