The Wider Environment

Bo Yibo, the last of the immortals

17/01/2007 14:58:42

Bo Yibo died on Monday, the New York Times reports:

Bo Yibo, the last of the Eight Immortals, Communist Party leaders who steered through a politically volatile shift from Maoism to today’s market-oriented economic boom, died Monday. He was 98…

…The Eight Immortals were an informal group of senior Communist Party leaders who were purged during Mao’s Cultural Revolution but experienced a second political life after Mr. Deng’s return to power in 1978.

All had participated in the Long March, the grueling 5,000-mile flight from Nationalist forces that saved the party from annihilation in ’s civil war. All supported, to varying degrees, the policy of “reform and opening” that laid the foundation for ’s newfound prosperity.

The Long March started in the mountain fastnesses of Jiangxi Province. It seems to have ended here:

The discreet outdoor sign is gone from the Starbucks coffee shop in Beijing China's most famous historical site, the Forbidden City . But the outlet there is generating sudden heat on the Internet and in newspapers, sparked by a journalist who contends that its presence is ``obscene'' and a ``trashing of Chinese culture.''

…Seattle-based Starbucks has about 200 coffee shops in , including one near a Great Wall of China site at Badaling, a short drive from Beijing . The company believes will become its largest market outside the .

A spokesman for Starbucks in , Roger Sun, said the company ``made serious efforts to fit into the environment of the Forbidden City and stay low-profile there.''

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