Bo Xilai Appeals Life Sentence in China

Former Community Party office sentenced for corruption

Chinese politician Bo Xilai, who ascended and then fell from the commanding heights of the Communist Party, has appealed his guilty verdict and life sentence for graft and abuse of power, Chinese authorities revealed Wednesday.

The former party secretary of the municipality of Chongqing, and member of the party's elite Politburo, Bo, 64, was sentenced to life imprisonment on Sept. 22 after a widely watched trial remarkable for its unusually public exposé of the lifestyle and personality of a top leader and his family.

In a statement on its website Wednesday, the Shandong high court said it had allowed him to appeal. The court is superior to the Jinan Intermediate People's Court, in the Shandong provincial capital in east China where Bo was tried, far from his centers of influence in northeast and southwest China.