Early Life
Bo Xilai was the fourth child of prominent Communist Party leader Bo Yibo, who served as Minister of Finance in the early years of the People's Republic of China but who fell from favor in 1965 for supporting more open trade relations with the West. When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, Bo Yibo was labeled a "rightist" and a "counterrevolutionary" and purged from his posts. He spent the ensuing twelve years in prison, where he was reportedly tortured. His wife, Hu Ming, was abducted by Red Guard in Guangzhou, and was either beaten to death or committed suicide.
Bo Xilai was 17 years old when the Cultural Revolution began, and at the time attended the prestigious No. 4 High School in Beijing — one of the best in the country. In the early years of the Cultural Revolution, Bo is reported to have been an active member of the liandong Red Guard organization and may have at one point denounced his father.
As the political winds of the Cultural Revolution shifted, Bo and his siblings were either imprisoned or sent to the countryside, and Bo Xilai was locked up for five years. After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, the members of the Gang of Four were officially blamed for the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, and Bo's family was released. Bo Yibo was politically rehabilitated, and in 1979 became vice premier.
After his release, Bo Xilai worked at the Hardware Repair Factory for the Beijing Second Light Industry Bureau. He was admitted to the Peking University by public examination in 1977. Unlike many of his contemporaries in the Chinese leadership who studied engineering, Bo majored in world history. In the second year of his studies, Bo enlisted in a Master's program in international journalism at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, graduating with a Master's degree in 1982. He joined the Communist Party in October 1980.
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