Things that make you go hmmm on China, Wen and Bo
On the power race developing in China. Stay tuned, as this will have implications for the rest of us. Latest weekend reading by Grant Williams.
Our story begins on November 14, 2011 in a nondescript hotel room in the hills above the Chinese city of Chongqing – roughly 850 miles north-west of Hong Kong – where a British businessman, 41 year-old Neil Heywood, was found dead.
After an extremely basic autopsy, the initial cause of death was listed as ‘excessive alcohol consumption’ and a rather hasty cremation took place in China with Heywood’s family being in- formed of his demise by telephone.
The story barely made the news either in China or back home in the UK.
Heywood wouldn’t have been the first British businessman abroad to overindulge in the bars and nightclubs of a foreign land and, if one were predisposed to finding a suitable ‘accident’ to befall an enemy who fit that mold, then drink- ing himself to death would have ordinarily been a fairly plausible cover story – but in this case, there was something that didn’t quite fit the of- ficial story – Heywood was teetotal.
According to the NY Times, Heywood’s funeral in Battersea, a few days before Christmas was a strange affair:
(NY Times): …mourners who gathered for Neil Heywood’s memorial service a few days before Christmas were perplexed by the in- structions laid down beforehand by one of Mr. Heywood’s classmates from Britain’s elite Harrow boarding school. He asked them not to approach Lulu Heywood, Mr. Heywood’s Chinese wife, and to remain in the pews until she and their two children had left the church.
The classmate’s eulogy made no mention of why a 41-year-old man in apparently good health had suddenly died. Nor could anyone ask the family.
Full Hmmm 22 April 2012 report.