The academic recalled Bo as ambitious, sharp and argumentative.īo Guagua’s name surfaces only sporadically in public accounts of Oxford student life, but what little there is shows drive and at times a sense of responsibility.Īccording to the independent Oxford student newspaper Cherwell, Bo was runner-up in the contest for Librarian - the de facto head - of the Oxford Union, an illustrious debating society that counts several British prime ministers among its former office holders. One Oxford academic said Bo came across as having the kind of keen intelligence that would have enabled him to keep up his course work while finding plenty of time to have fun. In 2010, a year later than expected, Bo graduated with high marks in politics, philosophy, and economics. He quoted an old Chinese saying, “A slow bird should make an early start.” In an interview published in the Chinese press in 2009, Bo gushed about Oxford and revealed his secret for maintaining a strong mix of pleasure and study - to sleep only four to five hours a night. Oxford University officials had no comment. Some Chinese diplomats even visited the university, northwest of London, to check on his progress, the source added. He was “rusticated” - effectively suspended - for 12 months for academic reasons, said a source familiar with his Oxford days. While at Balliol College, Oxford, from 2007, Bo Guagua gained a reputation as a party boy. He has also shown a fondness for luxury cars, once chauffeuring an American girl, the daughter of a diplomat, around Beijing in a Ferrari. Harvard classmates and others who know Bo from China and Oxford say he is not the quiet type: He likes socializing and has at times neglected his studies, much to his parents’ displeasure. University officials have declined to comment, citing their strict privacy policies. The young man’s family connections, which can be traced to his grandfather Bo Yibo, a revolutionary comrade of Mao Zedong, are now seen as poisonous rather than profitable in a country where personal relationships, or guangxi, are often the key to success.īo Guagua could not be contacted, and the status of his postgraduate career at Harvard, where he has been studying for a master’s degree, is uncertain. His father, Bo Xilai, one of China’s most charismatic and ambitious politicians, has been stripped of all his roles within the top echelons of the Chinese communist party. Late Friday, the UK Daily Telegraph reported that Bo Guagua, pulling a roller suitcase, slipped out of his apartment building late on Thursday night, in a pre-arranged pickup by law-enforcement officers.īo Guagua’s mother, Gu Kailai, has been detained on suspicion of murdering Heywood, who for years had close ties to the Bo family. “Now he is an orphan,” a source close to Bo’s family said. People are no longer sure of young Bo’s fate: return to his family in China, seek asylum in the United States, or other options. The story now looks certain to ruin his family and upend his ambitions. That was until a British expatriate, Neil Heywood, died last November in a hotel in a huge city in western China, a world away from the clipped lawns and hushed libraries of Harvard University where Bo was studying. His pedigree, elite schooling, easy confidence and connections left those who knew him in no doubt he would pursue a business career and amass a fortune. CAMBRIDGE, Mass./BEIJING/LONDON (Reuters) - Bo Guagua, a 24-year-old descendant of Chinese Communist royalty, seemed destined to one day become a rich and powerful businessman in an economy that in his lifetime would become the world’s largest.
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