dear friends:
I am from Dalian too. and my family was Bo's neighbor for quite a few years. Hence I also possess some first hand information about Bo, his wife Kai lai, and their son. I don't want to be more specific because I still have ties in China. let's just leave it as that.
to be fair, Bo is more able than most of senior officials of his level. as many who has worked with him say, he does work. and very hard! and most of people who work with him are afraid of him. however, one of his major issue is a side product of his smartness - he can NOT listen to any different opinions and he will NOT. over time, the ones closely associated with him and the ones he trusts and promotes are mostly snobs who are good at next-to-nothing but kissing asses. I give two examples here - he wants to promote a guy (Mr. Hong) to be the director of eco & trade commission. The guy had two previous affairs with female subordinates and was once arrested (accidentally) because he gathered a crowd in his apartment to watch adult videos. even though Dalianese are tame and obedient, the Dalian congress TWICE rejected the nomination. but Bo would not stop. He then appointed the guy secrectary of the eco & trade commission (which would not need Congress' approval) and left the director position open for years. another Bo's confidant (forgot his name - so many years) was nominated by him to head the police dept and right at the time he was arrested in eco & development zone b/c he was buying prostitute. The best part is that Bo intervened personally to first release the guy and then coached the policemen who made the arrest that the detainee "looked like" this Mr. future head of police. There are no boundaries to Bo.
there are so many talks about his 打黑 these days. but most people in Dalian and Shenyang would not forget that when Bo was in Liaoning, his wife had a law office. Her office "represented" most of the large companies even these companies still sepearately retain other law firms. and the fee? Y300,000 apiece, annually. over these years she had anywhere from 50 to 80 such clients, which means a cool 19.5 million a year - and that was the 90s. The firms represented by her office knew well that the payment was much worthwhile - we call it protection fee. Gangsters?