THE ROMANCE between Bo Guagua and Chen Xiaodan, true communist red-bloods whose grandparents fought fierce battles to win the 1949 revolution, is the closest thing to a royal courtship you’ll find in the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Photographs of the two youngsters canoodling, touching prayer wheels, riding yaks, visiting holy lakes and observing prayer flags during a holiday in Tibet are spreading like wildfire online in China. They are both third- generation members of China’s revolutionary elite, and the prospect of two “princelings” getting together has caused tremendous excitement in China.
Their tuxedos and Oscar de la Renta dresses are a million miles away from the combat fatigues favoured by their grandparents, who were key founding members of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Their youthful romance and stylish looks are now inspiring the young in the New China.
Bo Guagua (23) is the son of Bo Xilai, a major figure in the Communist Party who oversaw China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation in 2001, took on Peter Mandelson during trade negotiations with the EU and now runs the world’s biggest metropolitan area, Chongqing, as his own personal fiefdom.
Bo Xilai is the son of revolutionary veteran Bo Yibo, one of the “eight immortals” who held high office and whose name still causes knees to tremble among high officialdom in Beijing.
Bo Xilai has engaged in a highly public crackdown on organised crime in Chongqing. He is tipped for greater things, although some believe his high profile could work against him.
Bo Guagua studied at Harrow, then Oxford, where his efforts to become head of the Oxford Union distracted him from his academic work. Pictures of him wearing a crumpled tuxedo in the company of Western women both fascinated and appalled the Chinese online community. Now he is doing his public policy master’s at Harvard.
Chen Xiadoan is at Harvard too, doing an MBA. Her father Chen Yuan is chairman of the hugely influential China Development Bank and a former central bank deputy governor. The China Development Bank angered many people this week when it said it would only take Harvard or MIT graduates for its internship programme.
Chen Xiaodan is also the grandchild of one of the “eight immortals”, Chen Yun. She has featured in photographs of debs balls and is quite the socialite.
The pictures have run on Twitter, Facebook and Chinese social networks. Not everyone is enthusiastic about the match, or at least about the air of privilege surrounding the photographs.
“Isn’t it ironic?” wrote blogger Zhou Shuguang.
“The grandchildren of our founding Communist Party leaders using Facebook, which is banned by their grandparents? They were spoiled by the advantages of the resources provided by their grandparents.”