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Bo Guagua Fights Rumors with Email to Crimson
By wchung | 07 Jul, 2025
Bo Guagua has written an email to the Harvard Crimson in an apparent effort at defending himself against rumors that he had been living the life of a playboy on money acquired from his parents’ corruption and abuse of power.
Bo, the 25-year-old son of ousted Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai and suspected murderer Gu Kailai, is currently enrolled in his second year of a master’s degree program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. In his email to the Crimson he said he felt responsible to “provide an account of the facts” amid “increasing attention from the press” on his private life.
The most sensationalized aspect of Bo’s life are photos circulated on the web last year showing him drunk at a party. Not only did they show him shirtless, they depicted him in intimate poses with western women, provoking accusations from China’s netizens that Bo was squandering money that could only have been earned by his parents through corruption and abuse of power.
The parties he attended were merely “a regular feature of social life,” Bo said.
He also claimed that his tuition and living expenses at Harrow School, Oxford and Harvard were funded only by scholarships and savings his mother had earned “from her years as a successful lawyer and writer.”
His mother Gu Kailai is currently being detained on susicion of having had a hand in the death of British business consultant Neil Heywood. Heywood, a Harrow alumnus, is believed to have helped Guagua become the first Chinese to attend Harrow.
Addressing rumors that he had failed his Oxford exams and was suspended for a year, Bo said his examination records “have been solid” throughout his school years. He added that at Oxford he was a “tripartite”, being enrolled in politics, philosophy and economics “rather than dropping one in the second year, as is the norm.”
Bo also denied having used his family name for any profit-making business or ventures. Instead, he said he had developed a non-profit social networking website in China for NGO volunteers. The project is still in the development stage, he said.
He has “never driven a Ferrari” and had not been to the US Embassy in Beijing or the US ambassador’s residence in China, Bo said. That was in apparent response to a report last November in the Wall Street Journal that Bo had driven a red Ferrari in early 2011 to pick up Maryanne Huntsman, eldest daughter of then US American ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, for a dinner date.
In his email Bo also thanked his teachers, friends and classmates for their support during a difficult time. No mention was made of his parents’ detention by the central government or the media firestorm in which the entire family has been engulfed since Bo Xilai was fired from his Chongqing party secretary post.
Bo Guagua’s exact current whereabouts are unknown. He is reported to have left his luxury apartment on Harvard Square in Cambridge in the company of security agents. The FBI has denied that they were FBI agents. Recent reports in overseas Chinese media have suggested that the young man is now hiding out in New York City.
Bo Guagua (left) is shown with his father Bo Xilai, with a painting of his grandfather Bo Yibo, one of China's “Nine Immortals” of the revolution.
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