Beijing fears espionage affair

The Chinese judiciary is not thoroughly looking into the murder motive in the trial against Gu Kailai because doing so could uncover an espionage affair, writes the liberal-conservative business paper Il Sole 24 Ore: "Gu's motive is still unclear. There is talk of money. But there is a second hypothesis: Heywood could have been a spy. ... However in this country that is so full of spooks and suspects, the very idea of espionage is enough to get the complex political apparatus into gear. Because if Heywood was a spy, then Bo is automatically suspected of high treason - a capital sin for every Chinese. Certainly, this would not run counter to the interests of the Politburo, which sacked the populist-Maoist ideologue Bo. But such a suspicion would not fail to implicate the entire political apparatus in the affair, as it would be considered unable to protect itself from infiltration. In that case, silence is considered the better alternative."

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