This book reveals the deeper connection between China’s “New Era” under Xi Jinping and the political drama that preceded his rise, focusing on Bo Xilai’s ambitious campaign for power in Chongqing from 2008 to 2012. Bo, like Xi, was the son of a revolutionary leader and widely viewed as Xi’s chief rival during Hu Jintao’s final years. His spectacular downfall in 2012—marked by scandals of murder, corruption, and diplomatic intrigue—was China’s most dramatic political crisis since Tiananmen. The book offers a revisionist account of how and why Bo launched an unusually public political campaign within an authoritarian system. His Mao-style populism and egalitarian rhetoric, showcased through mass mobilization in Chongqing, foreshadowed many of the ideological and policy tendencies that have come to define Xi’s rule.

Lin Le is an independent researcher based in Menlo Park, CA. He is the author of China’s Conservative Turn: The Origins of Xi Jinping’s New Era (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2025).