BEIJING, CHINA - MARCH 09: China's Chongqing Municipality Communist Party Secretary Bo Xilai (Right) makes an obeisance to a delegate after the third plenary meeting of the National People's Congress (NPC) at The Great Hall Of The People on March 9, 2012 in Beijing, China. China's Chongqing Municipality Communist Party Secretary Bo Xilai said he was surprised to learn that his ex-police chief had run off to a US consulate during the the National People's Congress Chongqing group meeting today. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)Bo Xilai (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

. Link of the Day (2): March 27 2012: The estimable Pepe Escobar tells us what’s behind the sacking of Bo Xilai from the nine-member committee that runs China. He had been running the world’s biggest conurbation, with 31 million people, Chongqing in Sichuan province, and had a Mao-inspired programme for more equality. Nix on that, says the ruling oligarchy. Another revealing commentary from Al Jazeera.

. (“….cohesion, consensus and stability had to be the unified message, as China's fragilities are increasingly exposed: how to lift tens of millions more Chinese from an agrarian dead end, how to get decent healthcare for

. these tens of millions, how to fight multiple instances of party corruption. There's no question that Deng-inspired, modernised China has hurled a

. massive strategic, ideological and political challenge at a still-dazed and confused West.

. (“China is home to an immensely sophisticated, ancient civilisation. It harbours an ocean of humanity, and it has been modernising for only three decades (which is only a minute by Chinese standards). The Bo episode was

. just a minor detail. We will only have a clear picture where China will be in 2020 after next autumn, or by the spring of 2013. But make no mistake: stability, as Buddhism tells us, is an illusion. China's leaders are now riders on the storm.”)