The trial of disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai began on Thursday morning at a courthouse in eastern China amid small protests and intense media scrutiny, opening the last chapter in the country's most dramatic political shakeup in decades.

Bo has been formally accused of bribery, corruption and abuse of power, and is standing trial at an intermediate court in Jinan, the capital of coastal Shandong province. He arrived at the courthouse in a silver minivan at around 8.20am and the trial formally began shortly afterwards, according to official reports on Sina Weibo, the country's most popular microblog. The posts included a photograph of Bo Xilai in court – it is the first time he has been seen by the public in 17 months.

In the courtroom's public area were 110 people including five of Bo's relatives and 19 media representatives, according to a post on the courthouse's Weibo microblog. A press conference was scheduled for later in the afternoon.

Bo stands accused of receiving bribes totaling 21.8m yuan (£2.3m) between 2000 and 2012 from the heads of two companies, Dalian International Development and Dalian Shide Group, according to an indictment posted to the court's live feed. He took the bribes "either by himself or with the aid of his wife and his son", the indictment said.

At around 11.30am the court posted a photo of Bo standing trial, looking clean-shaven and demure in a white dress shirt and black slacks. It was the first publicly released image of Bo in 17 months.

Bo, a 64-year-old former commerce minister and provincial governor, was once considered a main contender for China's most powerful ruling body, the seven-person Politburo standing committee. His populist rhetoric and tough stance on crime earned him wide public support in the south-western metropolis of Chongqing and north-eastern city of Dalian, where he served in top party posts.

Pictures posted online showed small demonstrations outside the courthouse the morning of the trial. In one a man holds a portrait of Mao, while the man next to him holds a poster reading: "Chongqing's experiments benefited the country and the people. Wealth for all is what the people want."

Other protesters, drawn by flocks of domestic and international journalists on the barricaded streets surrounding the courthouse, took the opportunity to air personal grievances. One man climbed a fence and began yelling before police bundled him off in front of a smartphone-wielding crowd.

Bo's career imploded in 2012 when his second-in-command, Chongqing's police chief Wang Lijun, defected to a US consulate in south-west China carrying stacks of incriminating documents. The ensuing fallout revealed that Bo's estranged wife, a former lawyer named Gu Kailai, had murdered a British businessman in a Chongqing hotel the previous autumn, ostensibly over a soured business deal.

In September 2012 Wang was sentenced to 15 years in jail for charges including abuse of power, defection and taking bribes. Gu was arrested and convicted of "intentional homicide" for poisoning the businessman, Neil Heywood, with cyanide. Both are in prison. Many details of the case are still unclear.

The trial's outcome will almost certainly have political implications. In China the ruling Communist party controls the courts and often determines verdicts well in advance.

Bo's trial is widely considered the country's most closely watched and politically charged since Mao Zedong's widow Jiang Qing was tried in 1980 for overseeing atrocities during the cultural revolution.

Bo's 25-year-old son Bo Guagua, currently a student at Columbia Law School in New York City, told the New York Times this week that he had been denied contact with his parents for the past 18 months.

"I can only surmise the conditions of their clandestine detention and the adversity they each endure in solitude," he said, adding that he hoped his father would be able "to answer his critics and defend himself without constraints of any kind".

Despite official statements describing the trial as open, foreign media have not been allowed to enter the courthouse, as was the case during Gu's trial last year.

"Bo Xilai's case seems to be a public trial but whoever sits in the courtroom is strictly and carefully selected," said He Weifang, a well-known law professor. "Bo's case is very political, not an ordinary criminal case, so we can't make a judgment about it based on independent judicial operations."

He added: "If all the details about how Bo was promoted or all the power behind him were revealed, that would be shocking."

Analysts say the case poses a challenge for the country's newly anointed president, Xi Jinping. If Bo's sentence is too lenient some will question Xi's often-repeated promises to tackle endemic corruption within the party. If it's too severe he risks alienating Bo's support base and underscoring the question of why Bo was allowed to ascend the party ranks despite his crimes.

Xi launched an anti-corruption campaign shortly after taking over as China's leader and has vowed to tackle both "flies and tigers" – meaning both top officials and lowlier cadres.

While the verdict may not be revealed for weeks, analysts predict that Bo will receive a hefty prison sentence. In China 98% of criminal cases end in convictions.

The former railways minister Liu Zhijun was given a suspended death sentence for bribery and abuse of power last month, although such judgments are almost always commuted to imprisonment. Xinhua confirmed last week that another senior official – Liu Tienan, a former deputy director of the country's top economic planning body – is under investigation by prosecutors for taking bribes.

He Weifang said Bo's case was "setting up the authority for the new leadership ... but it may also ruin the legitimacy of the party. For example people believe that he embezzled much more than is being announced. If all the details about how Bo was promoted or all the power behind him was revealed, that would be shocking."

Wu Qiang, a political scientist at Tsinghua University, described Bo as a "sacrificial lamb" of political conflict. He said the government was very serious about the current anti-corruption campaign because it was tied to the survival and legitimacy of the party and the support of the masses.

But he added: "Bo's case can be seen as a sign of the fight against corruption, but the nature of Chinese political power means that corruption can't be solved completely. The senior levels of government, including Bo, are overlapping with multiple roles.

"They have four identities: capitalist, entrepreneur, political entrepreneur and bureaucrat. Those four identities are highly coinciding with each other. From the senior levels to bottom levels in Chinese government there is no exception."