Bo Xilai’s anti-corruption campaign still gets local Chinese news coverage, and now songs and text messages singing his praises have raised him to rock star status. Bo is mayor of Chongqing, a city-province in central China. Having done quite a lot of business there myself, I can certainly say Chongqing is the epicenter of the Wild West brand of doing business in the country. Oligarchies such as the Chang’an group run enterprises, townships in the province and the city proper. Chongqing is the only city in China in which I nearly throttled a local government official for being an unhelpful, arrogant snot.

The Financial Times writes that Bo’s campaign has been timed with the meeting of the National People’s Congress, to regain him the visibility he desires to be named to the Party’s Standing Committee in 2012. Conservatives hate that sort of glitter, especially as under their watch crime and the syndicates that run them have grown considerably the last ten years. The former mayor of Chongqing, He Guoqiang, is particularly embarrassed, as colleagues he had workedclosely with during his tenure in Chongqing are now up before judges, their fates all but signed, sealed and delivered.

And then, of course, the populist – almost cultish – attention Bo is receiving is drawing Hu Jintao’s own attention away from other matters, though citizens’ calls to clean up other cities with the same verve is becoming shrill.

In Chinese politics and society, it’s seldom a good idea to be louder than the boss.