Updated at 12.30 p.m. ET on 2013-8-22
Disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai denied some of the bribery charges against him on the first day of his long-awaited trial at a court in the eastern province of Shandong on Thursday.
Former Chongqing ruling Chinese Communist Party chief Bo, 64, stood trial at the Intermediate People's Court in the provincial capital, Jinan, on charges of receiving more than 20 million yuan (U.S. $3.26 million) in bribes and of embezzling another 5 million yuan (U.S. $815,000) as well as of abusing power.
The trial is the most politically charged to take place in China since that of Jiang Qing, wife of late supreme leader Mao Zedong and member of the "Gang of Four," in 1980.
In what many commentators said was a carefully stage-managed show trial, Bo on Thursday dismissed some of the evidence against him, saying part of his "confession" was made under the pressure of interrogation by the Party's graft-busting agency, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
"Regarding the matter of Tang Xiaolin giving me money three times, I once admitted it against my will during the Central Discipline Inspection Commission's investigation against me," Bo said, referring to the general manager of Hong Kong-based Dalian International Development Co.
But Bo, who analysts say is certain to be found guilty and has likely already negotiated his plea, defense statements and punishment with China's leaders, said he would bear "legal responsibility," nonethless.
According to updates posted to the Jinan Intermediate People's Court's official account on the Twitter-like service Sina Weibo, Bo is accused of receiving about 21.8 million yuan (U.S. $3.56 million) in bribes from his friend and property tycoon Xu Ming and Tang, whose whereabouts are currently unknown.
'Rabid dog'
Bo said Tang was behaving like "a rabid dog" who wanted to frame him to promote his own interests.
"This evidence has little to do with my guilt," Bo said. "I was deceived."
Bo appeared in good health and fully alert at the trial, dressed in a white shirt and stood in the dock flanked by two policemen, photos and video released by the court on Sina Weibo showed.
The court was filled with around 100 spectators and hand-picked journalists from China's tightly controlled state media outlets.
The rest of the media was able to follow the trial by television link-up, an unprecedented level of coverage in a country where sensitive court cases are often heard in secret.
State broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) said the trial would last two days, and that a decision was expected from the court in early September.
Beijing-based veteran journalist Gao Yu said that every detail of the trial would have been carefully planned in advance by the top leadership.
"Of course I think this is all [President] Xi Jinping's production, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to send out updates on Sina Weibo," she said.
But she said the trial had carefully avoided mentioning ideological "crimes," which had been the focus of Jiang Qing's trial.
"In Jiang Qing's case, they turned an ideological struggle into a legal matter."
Departed from script?
Meanwhile, U.S.-based human right researcher Gao Wenqian said he believed Bo had departed from the agreed script in retracting his confession, however.
"Now, people watching this will think that Bo Xilai is still an upstanding official, and I think this will do great damage to Xi Jinping," he said.
"China has so many acute social problems, and now Bo Xilai has become a spiritual leader for the Maoist left and the disadvantaged groups."
Bo still has some outspoken support in Party ranks, and Beijing has tightened its grip on public opinion linked to his trial.
On Thursday, police turned away a small group of protesters who arrived outside the Jinan court building to support Bo, calling the charges against him politically motivated persecution, Reuters reported.
Early online comments about the trial were mixed, with some applauding the level of openness, and others openly supportive of Bo and disparaging of the government.
"The prosecutor has already started to get in a muddle," wrote Sina Weibo user @amaiqiu, in a comment to an official court post that was retweeted thousands of times. "Very low grades."
Others repeated the Chinese saying "Everybody's happy," which is also used to translate the title of Shakespeare's play, "As You Like It."
Prospect of lighter sentence
Some saw Bo's retraction of his confession as a sign that the Party was preparing to hand him a lighter sentence than the lengthy jail term which has been widely predicted.
"Looks like he'll get 3-5 years," wrote Sina Weibo user @tianren123."Everybody's happy."
"This is too ridiculous," agreed user @xishahaoda. "The prosecutor is just picking out random conversations and using them as evidence."
"Go Bo Xilai!"
Others shared experiences of life in a city run by Bo.
"When Bo was in Dalian, everyone had to clear out of the city on inspection visits, and the way was cleared by two imported jeeps driven by armed police...sirens blaring, with countless plainclothes police everywhere,"
wrote user @xiqingdongyin.
The court said that Bo had received the bribes through his wife, Gu Kailai, and his son, Bo Guagua, citing the indictment.
The charge of abuse of power against Bo Xilai in linked to the cover-up of the murder of a British businessman, Neil Heywood by Gu, who has already received a suspended death sentence in August 2012.
The court said Bo had sacked his Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun after the latter told him Gu was a suspect, without consulting his superiors.
Bo also stands accused of embezzling 5 million yuan from a government project in the northeastern port city of Dalian, where he served as Party secretary, the court said.
Bo Guagua is currently studying law at Columbia University, and said in a public statement this week that he has been denied contact with either parent for the past 18 months.
'Trials mere plays'
Despite the apparent courtroom drama and relative transparency surrounding his trial, political commentators have warned that no judicial decision in China is taken independently of the ruling Communist Party.
In Bo's case, the staging of the trial and its eventual outcome will likely have been vetted by politicians at the highest levels of leadership.
"If a case involves a political figure, or political factors, or will have political consequences in China, then a courtroom becomes a theater, and trials merely plays," wrote top former Party aide Bao Tong in an essay written under house arrest and broadcast on RFA's Mandarin service on Wednesday.
"The rule of law has lost battle after battle, while authoritarian power has won, time and again," said Bao, a former aide to late, disgraced premier Zhao Ziyang.
"The legal system has become the slave of power, merely there for decoration," wrote Bao from his Beijing home, where he has been under house arrest since serving a seven-year jail term in the wake of the
1989 military suppression of the student-led pro-democracy movement.
"Courts at every level only exist as compliant tools of the Party."
The charismatic and once-powerful Bo had once been widely tipped to rise from his post as Chongqing Party secretary to the all-powerful standing committee of the Party's Politburo.
But the flight of his police chief Wang to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu on Feb. 6, 2012, signaled that all was not well with Bo's controversial "Chongqing model" of revolutionary Mao-era ballads and large-scale anti-crime campaigns in the city.
Wang was handed a 15-year jail term in September for "bending the law for selfish ends, defection, abuse of power, and bribe-taking."
Reported by Yang Fan for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Hai Nan for the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.