'Legitimacy belongs to the victor; losers are always in the wrong.'
For thousands of years of Chinese history, that phrase has inspired countless ambitious peasant bandits and generals alike to seek the ultimate glory of being crowned king.
Although victors were few and far between, with most contenders ending up badly defeated and usually beheaded, that has not prevented them from trying to seize power.
In this context, it is not difficult to understand why Bo Xilai has become a victim of his own ambitions by pursuing a course that has led to his spectacular fall from grace.
The irony will not be lost on many mainlanders that, until a few months ago, Bo, the flamboyant and controversial party secretary of Chongqing, would have looked certain to become a key member of the new leadership to be unveiled at the Communist Party's 18th Congress, scheduled to be held in the autumn. But Bo's fate changed on February 6 when Wang Lijun , his right-hand man and former police chief of Chongqing, walked into the US consulate in Chengdu with incriminating evidence against Bo and Bo's wife, triggering one of China's biggest political crises of recent decades.
As analysts have pointed out, Bo's character had the hallmarks of a typical populist politician easily found in a Western country - smart, abrasive, ruthless and media-savvy (he has a master's degree in journalism).
He is anything but dull and wooden, which are the characteristics of the mainland bureaucrats who seek to rule by consensus and hide their true colours behind the tightly scripted propaganda.