IT IS hard not to admire the chutzpah. The Chinese Communist Party is trying to turn the worst embarrassment it has suffered in recent years into an advertisement for its virtues. The imminent trial of Bo Xilai, a high-flying politician who was disgraced in March last year, is being trumpeted as, in the words of China Daily, an official paper, “reassuring proof that the leadership’s tough stance on corruption is by no means empty talk”. The paper goes so far as to claim that Mr Bo’s indictment is a “credible demonstration that all people in China are equal in front of the law”. More accurately, it is just the latest evidence that some are more equal than others in front of a legal system that does the party’s bidding. Mr Bo is paying the price not for his undoubted crimes, but for having come off worse in a factional struggle.

Presenting his case as a landmark in the struggle against corruption, however, serves at least three main purposes. An anti-graft campaign has been the most popular policy of the regime led by Xi Jinping, who took over as party leader last November and as China’s president in March. Bans on lavish banquets and the building of ostentatious palaces for offices do something to appease a public seething at the arrogant flaunting of ill-gotten official wealth. Better still to show that the drive can net a man of Mr Bo’s former stature: son of one of the party’s “immortal” revolutionary heroes; Politburo member; and leader of the provincial-level municipality of Chongqing. It helps the party claim, as Mr Xi and others like to say, that high-ranking “tigers” as well as humble “flies” are in the new leaders’ sights.

That tigers are on the take would surprise no one in China—though, if it is ever discovered, the true extent of official corruption, and of the wealth stashed away by the country’s leaders, might still take the breath away. So a second reason for playing up this aspect of Mr Bo’s case is to deflect attention from the more shocking parts of his story.

He used his own drive against crime and corruption in Chongqing to have awkward obstacles to his ambitions harassed, tortured and murdered. He also, unusually in China’s opaque political system, lobbied more or less openly for elevation to the pinnacle of party power, the Politburo’s elite standing committee. His campaign platform was his running of Chongqing—notably his purge of the local mafia, but also other innovations, such as the revival of Mao-era “red culture” and the singing of revolutionary songs.

That is a third reason for the new leadership to want to keep Mr Bo’s politics off the charge-sheet. Mr Bo remains something of a hero to some of the party’s “leftists”. In 2010 even Mr Xi lavished praise on the “singing red” campaign. And although, since taking national power, he has hinted at further economic reform, he has also echoed some core leftist tenets—the primacy of the party, the rejection of political pluralism and respect for the late Chairman Mao. He is overseeing a harsh crackdown on human-rights activists, and promoting not structural political reform but a “mass line” campaign to bring the party closer to the people.

So Mr Bo is in luck: it suits the party to tone down the charges he faces. The indictment eventually released on July 25th does include the “abuse of power”, which could cover a multitude of crimes. Most likely, however, it is reference merely to his role in the cover-up of a murder. His political ambitions might even have been realised had his former lieutenant, police chief Wang Lijun, not turned against him in February last year. Mr Wang’s attempted defection to America led to the conviction a year ago of Mr Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, for the poisoning of a British business associate, Neil Heywood. But for Mr Wang, Mr and Mrs Bo might well have got away with murder, and Mr Bo might now be vying with Mr Xi for national power.

Even as the net closed on him in February last year, Mr Bo did not go quietly. He paid an unscheduled visit to the south-western city of Kunming, to an army unit founded by his father, Bo Yibo. The implicit threat—of a split in the army behind different party factions—was terrifying. The next month, talking of politics in Chongqing, Wen Jiabao, prime minister at the time, spoke of the risk of a tragedy in China “like the Cultural Revolution”. Even now, Mr Xi still seems worried. Ahead of Army Day on August 1st, he visited a unit in Beijing, reminding soldiers that “we must make sure that troops obey the command of the party and are absolutely loyal and reliable.”

The fear of improvisation

That it has taken so long to write the script for the coming trial suggests that Mr Bo may have been intent on fluffing his lines—or might even ad-lib. His wife is locked up. His son, Bo Guagua, is safely out of the country, enrolled in a law course in New York. Mr Bo has little to lose. He knows where some of the bodies are buried and, even now, is not without well-placed sympathisers. So he still holds some cards.

It is important for Mr Xi, however, that the Bo case be closed and the party’s factional squabbles seen as settled in Mr Xi’s favour. In this context, it was striking that Jiang Zemin, the party’s leader from 1989 to 2002 and still an influential power broker, emerged from the shadows in early July to meet Henry Kissinger. Their conversation, reported by the Chinese press three weeks later, just before the indictment of Mr Bo, included Mr Jiang’s expression of “full confidence” in the new leadership.

Since both Mr Bo and Mr Xi were once seen as protégés of Mr Jiang, this was an important endorsement. Like Mr Bo, Mr Xi is a “princeling”, the son of a party elder, and like him seems to carry a natural self-confidence and charisma that eluded his predecessor, Hu Jintao. Ahead of the party leaders’ annual seaside conclave at Beidaihe, and an important meeting of the party’s central committee in the autumn, he is consolidating his power. What he has yet to make clear is how he intends to use it.

Economist.com/blogs/banyan