“Indulging the whims of the first family of Dalian appears to have paid off handsomely for Mr. Xu, who built a fortune in the city while Mr. Bo was mayor there from 1993 to 2001. Mr. Xu, as chairman of a company called Dalian Shide Group, was ranked a few years later as China’s eighth-richest man. Now he is in trouble. Mr. Xu has been missing since late March, when he was detained soon after Chinese authorities sacked Mr. Bo as Communist Party chief in Chongqing city, according to people familiar with the matter. The people said it is their understanding investigators are scrutinizing Mr. Xu’s links to the Bo family, especially his business ties to Ms. Gu and his role in helping arrange the overseas education of her son, Bo Guagua. Ms. Gu herself is in detention as a suspect in the death of a British businessman found dead in Chongqing last fall. She, her husband and Mr. Xu are all unreachable, their whereabouts unknown. Mr. Xu’s detention underscores a broader dynamic at the heart of the Bo scandal: the intersection of money and power under China’s system of state capitalism. Many business leaders in China rely on close relationships with party officials, who have sweeping powers to set policy, allocate government contracts, distribute credit from state banks and control the police, media and courts. The business leaders often nurture these relationships with various gifts and favors. Such relationships rarely are exposed, under a system in which the party forbids public scrutiny of its affairs. Business ties are often hidden through shell companies and offshore vehicles. The close relationship of a businessman with a political leader “was not anything unique to Bo Xilai,” said Victor Shih, an expert on Chinese politics at Northwestern University. “It happens at every level of government. Find me a Chinese mayor who doesn’t have these special relationships.” In 2004, Mr. Bo moved to Beijing as China’s commerce minister. Shortly afterward, Mr. Xu’s Dalian Shide was among a handful of private companies the ministry licensed to import crude and refined oil. In 2005, Forbes magazine ranked Mr. Xu as China’s eighth-richest man and, at 34, one of its two youngest billionaires. He became a regular guest at international business conferences. By 2009, Dalian Shide had taken an interest in real estate in Mr. Bo’s new city, Chongqing, where he had become Communist Party chief. Company executives set up a business there called Tian Shi An De Real Estate Development Co. Ltd., according to public records in Chongqing and Hong Kong. It is unclear what that company did in Chongqing. Calls to its headquarters went unanswered. Several state media reports have said it invested in Chongqing’s Liangjiang New Area, a project championed by Mr. Bo. ”
