Profile: Gu Kailai, a different kind of Chinese political wife

The accepted behaviour for wives of China’s top leaders is to be seen rarely and heard even less. Long gone are the days when Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong’s wife, stirred up chaos within the party through her vociferous bids for power, only to end up jailed for life. Few in the public could name the wife of most Communist leaders today.

That marks Gu Kailai, a hard-driving lawyer, the daughter of a revolutionary hero and the wife of fallen Politburo member Bo Xilai, as a woman apart.  

Gu, 53, displays an individual drive virtually equal to her once-glamorous husband. She was gaining success in her legal career winning high-profile cases in the United States, and limited fame through her book Uphold Justice in America, which later was made into a popular TV series.  

In an ironic turn of fate, Gu on Monday received a suspended death sentence from a court in Hefei, Anhui province for murdering British businessman Neil Heywood last year. The sentence means that Gu is likely to face life in jail, provided she does not commit offences in the next two years.

Denver lawyer Ed Byrne, whom Gu had hired to represent Chinese companies in her more glorious days in court, recalled his impression of Gu.

“I was very impressed with her. She was very sharp, and fortunately her English was very good,” The Wall Street Journal quoted Byrne as saying.