Bo Xilai‘s political death knell has sounded across China as newspaper front pages and hourly news bulletins trumpeted his disgrace and his wife‘s detention for the suspected murder of the Briton Neil Heywood.

The scandal that toppled the high-profile former leadership contender is the biggest political upheaval in China since the general secretary Zhao Ziyang was ousted following the Tiananmen democracy protests in 1989. It comes months before a once-a-decade leadership transition.