Bo Guagua Uses Tumblr for Statement

On Saturday, Bo Guagua, the Harvard-educated son of ousted Chinese leader Bo Xilai, used Tumblr to post a comment about his father's expulsion from the Communist Party.

Personally, it is hard for me to believe the allegations that were announced against my father, because they contradict everything I have come to know about him throughout my life. Although the policies my father enacted are open to debate, the father I know is upright in his beliefs and devoted to duty. He has always taught me to be my own person and to have concern for causes greater than ourselves. I have tried to follow his advice. At this point, I expect the legal process to follow its normal course, and I will await the result.

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Reuters have confirmed that Bo was behind the post.

During most of the scandal that engulfed his family this year, 24-year-old Bo seemed to attempt a low-profile. However, his position in the scandal seems to have made a low-profile impossible for him.

If official stories are to be believed, the younger Bo plays a key, though unintentional and indirect, part in the murder of Neil Heywood. Heywood had been employed by the family to help Bo study in the UK and his mother claimed that she murdered the British businessman after he threatened her son.

Perhaps even more important than that, however, is what Bo's privileged upbringing (rightly or wrongly) represented in the scandal. Educated at the UK's most famous school before heading to Oxford and then Harvard, Bo lived a life that appeared to be financially impossible on his father's official salary and prompted widespread suspicion of corruption. The British press investigated his reputation and dubbed him a "playboy", reporting that he was known for "throwing champagne and shisha parties in college rooms."

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Bo's lifestyle became embodied by a story about him taking an unnamed Huntsman daughter on a date in a Ferrari convertible. Bo denied the story but was later found to have received three tickets for speeding in an $80,000 2011 Porsche Panamera in the states in 2010 and 2011. He was later seen standing by a stretched limo.

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