In Old Tradition, China Races to Erase Bo Xilai's Legacy Tim Franco for The New York Times Many are wondering about what will happen to development projects in Chongqing after the change in leadership. CHONGQING, China - Until recently, visitors who arrived at the urban planning exhibition hall here were greeted with a high-tech shrine to Bo Xilai, who served as the municipality's charismatic Communist Party chief. A video recounting Mr. Bo's "smash black" crackdown on organized crime featured mug shots of gangsters emblazoned on tombstones. Maoist revolutionary songs blared from speakers in the "red culture" wing. Lasers zipped across the "honest government" gallery. But in February, two days after Mr. Bo's police chief, Wang Lijun, sought refuge in an American consulate, apparently with evidence of a murder plot hatched by Mr. Bo's wife, the "smash black" exhibit shut its doors. The remaining galleries were closed last month after Mr. Bo was removed from his Communist Party posts in a widening corruption scandal that is roiling the Chinese government. Today, the entire floor is cordoned off. The sudden demise of the exhibit reflects the headlong race under way to expunge all traces of Mr. Bo and his political fingerprints from the city he spent five years governing. In seeking to airbrush Mr. Bo out of public life, party mandarins in Beijing have dusted off a strategy perfected during the Cultural Revolution and further tweaked during the political purges that followed the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. "There is a manual on how to delete the legacies of a fallen leader, and they've got it down to the smallest details," said Minxin Pei, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California. The results have been swift and efficient. Residents say that just 15 hours after Mr. Bo's ouster, Chongqing's satellite television station, which he had required to broadcast only commercial-free "red culture" programming, began showing advertisements. Then came a media campaign meant to destroy his reputation. But the party's sudden vilification of Mr. Bo and his once-lauded projects has laid bare its thin ideological marrow. After years of instructing citizens to revere Mr. Bo, the party has aggravated public cynicism by orchestrating his hasty downfall. "People here just don't trust the central government," said a local magazine journalist, who described the orders from editors to stop reporting on Mr. Bo's accomplishments. Now they're telling us Bo's a bad guy. But no government official is innocent. At least we know our lives got better after he came. As the self-appointed mascot of the so-called Chongqing Model - his signature formula of state-led investment projects and populist politicking - Mr. Bo used the urban landscape as a canvas for his agenda. The local government planted thousands of Mr. Bo's beloved ginkgo trees, organized "red culture" performances and stationed police officers throughout the city. To ensure residents linked the initiatives to Mr. Bo, his underlings slathered the city in billboards branded with slogans, including "Safe Chongqing" and "Healthy Chongqing." "They're all gone," said a downtown magazine vendor recently, nodding at a wall where three weeks ago city workers replaced the propaganda signs with ideology-free images of trees and skyscrapers. The Chinese government is rushing to cauterize the political damage just months before the party orchestrates a once-in-a-decade power transfer to a new generation of leaders. Mr. Bo, the scion of one of modern China's revolutionary founders, once aspired to be among those who effectively run the country by joining the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee. Mr. Bo has also been scrubbed from boardrooms here, despite his success at luring multinational corporations to Chongqing and overseeing the country's highest rate of growth. Gone are the portraits that graced office walls, say those who work for state-backed enterprises. In this era of instantaneously shifting loyalties, any perceived allegiance to Mr. Bo could prove disastrous. Dozens of officials have been detained as the central government moves to dismantle his support network. At the headquarters of the Liangjiang New Area, billed as China's third-largest development zone, visiting delegations were once greeted with a video of Mr. Bo championing the area's industrial prowess. The screens are now dark. Some local business executives hope Mr. Bo's famous preference for state-owned enterprises over private corporations will fade with him. In rejecting the Chongqing Model, the municipality's new leadership, under the party chief Zhang Dejiang, appears to be showing a greater interest in the private sector. Wu Xu, the chairman of Chongqing Sincere Group, a property development company, heaped leaden praise on Mr. Zhang while carefully avoiding any mention of his predecessor. Chain smoking in his corner office, Mr. Wu lauded Mr. Zhang for holding a meeting of private-business owners soon after his arrival. "That never happened before," he said. There's been a big change. We are more confident in this business environment. But the purge has also created headaches for entrepreneurs. Edy Yin contributed research from Beijing.