Bo Xilai (photo: VoA)

The dramatic story of the downfall of Chongqing's Party Secretary Bo Xilai represents the biggest political shake-up in China for two decades. The charismatic Bo Xilai was expected to be promoted to the highest levels of power in China as member of the Politburo Standing Committee later this year. Bo Xilai has now been stripped of all his Communist Party posts and is officially under investigation for breaking party discipline. With little available information, there is widespread speculation about what really happened, the reasons for Bo Xilai's downfall and, not least, the significance for the political scene in China.

In this week's In Focus blog Christian Göbel, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political Science at Lund university, analyses the most commonly accepted explanations that are discussed in China and abroad and gives us his view of the political significance of the Bo Xilai affair.