IN A heavily guarded courthouse in the eastern city of Jinan, the trial began on August 22nd of a politician who was once one of China’s most powerful figures. Bo Xilai, who is 64, has been accused of receiving bribes, embezzlement and abuse of power. His downfall in March 2012 caused the greatest political shock of its kind in decades.

That the trial is under way at last is a sign that Xi Jinping, who took over as China’s leader eight months after Mr Bo disappeared from public view, is confident that he can handle its ramifications. Mr Bo, like Mr Xi, is the son of one of Mao Zedong’s fellow revolutionaries. He remains popular in the parts of China where he has served, including as Communist Party chief in the 29m-strong region of Chongqing in the south-west. He is an icon of diehard Maoists and members of the “new left” who decry China’s move towards money making. Handling Mr Bo’s case without upsetting powerful families and arousing public ire (whether of Mr Bo’s fans or of the many Chinese who are aggrieved at widespread official corruption) has been Mr Xi’s challenge. As the trial began, dozens of supporters gathered nearby. Police dragged several away.

Mr Xi and his colleagues wished to choreograph the proceedings—which at the time of going to press were expected to last just a day or two—with great precision. But Mr Bo, with a characteristic feistiness, queered the pitch from the outset. He denied a charge of bribery involving payments of more than 1.1m yuan ($180,000) from a businessman in the north-eastern city of Dalian. His response to the other charges, including millions of dollars in other kickbacks, are not yet known. Foreign journalists were barred from the trial.

The allegations, even if disagreeable to Mr Bo, would have been tailored to suit all factions—including, to some extent, his own, for Mr Bo had powerful backers, including within the security forces. Speculation has also centred on whether the state tried to secure Mr Bo’s co-operation by promising not to go after his 25-year-old son, Bo Guagua, who was expensively educated in Britain and is now studying in America. The younger Mr Bo may hope one day to to avenge his father’s downfall.

Yet Mr Xi will not have compromised on keeping an unusually independent-minded, populist leader, with good looks to boot, from competing with him for control of China. Mr Bo is very unlikely to be executed, but he will surely be jailed for a good deal longer than the ten years that Mr Xi is due to serve as party leader, commander-in-chief and president. Mr Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, was spared execution a year ago when she was convicted of murdering a British man, Neil Heywood, over an alleged business dispute.

For all the evidence that his family has money, Mr Bo would probably not have been accused of corruption were it not for Heywood’s death and the flight of Mr Bo’s former police chief, Wang Lijun, to the American consulate in Chengdu. Mr Wang’s revelations enabled Mr Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, to strike out at Mr Bo, who had been upstaging both him and Mr Xi with a mini-revival of Maoism.

Mr Xi, however, does not want the party’s dirty laundry aired. Mr Bo’s charges appear anodyne compared with some of what he is said to have done, including using widespread torture in a sweeping crackdown on organised crime. The bribery charges involve piffling sums compared with other recent cases involving senior officials. He is accused of trying to block a proper investigation of Heywood’s death and of sacking Mr Wang illegally. But no mention is made of reports that he ordered the tapping of party leaders’ calls.

If Mr Bo’s case has highlighted the dirtiness of party infighting and the dangers of untrammelled power, the official media have done their best to hide it. Rather, the trial is being promoted as evidence of how “rule of law” is gaining strength and of how Mr Xi’s vaunted campaign against corruption is aimed at the powerful as much as the small fry. Few are convinced. In recent months police have rounded up dozens of activists, including those calling for the disclosure of officials’ wealth.

Mr Xi is perhaps relieved that Mr Bo’s supporters have not mobilised in greater numbers to oppose the trial. He has, indeed, won grudging support from at least some leftists. With curious echoes of Mr Bo’s campaign in Chongqing, Mr Xi has also adopted Maoist rhetoric, with much talk of how officials must get close to the masses and oppose Western pollutions such as media independence and civic rights. Mr Xi, like Mr Bo before him, has shown no inclination to revert to Maoist egalitarianism and push back the market. But China’s leftists, lacking any open champion, will clutch at any straws.

Liberals, by contrast, are despondent at Mr Xi’s rhetoric. Yet some still hope that, on economic matters, Mr Xi may prove a reformer. Earlier this month he and his party colleagues convened their annual retreat at the seaside resort of Beidaihe, east of Beijing. Their discussions are thought to have focused on wrapping up Mr Bo’s case and moving on to the next big item on the party’s agenda, a plenum of its central committee that is expected to take place in October. There Mr Xi will indicate the course of reform in the coming years.

Reformists hope the plenum will begin to steer the economy away from what might be called the Beidaihe model: at the resort, the beach-front is controlled by state-owned enterprises offering subsidised accommodation to state employees, while private guesthouses are relegated to the backstreets; the one foreign-brand hotel, a Sheraton that opened this year, is set far back from the sea.

It is not at all clear, though, that Mr Xi has the will or the muscle to confront the interests of China’s state-owned behemoths—essential if he is to fulfil the party’s stated ambition of shifting away from investment-heavy growth. Despite suggestions in some quarters that the plenum will be a turning point in China’s economic reforms, little indicates that bold decisions have yet been made. The economy badly needs less government interference, more room for private enterprise, and a stronger rule of law. Each will antagonise powerful parts of the party establishment. Silencing Mr Bo may prove the easy part.