China’s drunken boxer: Jackie Chan takes a kung-fu kick at freedom

In what has to be the most disgraceful statement ever by a major film star, Jackie Chan has told the Chinese dictatorship that the Chinese people are incapable of handling freedom.

We haven’t heard much about this yet on this side of the world, but last weekend (April 18), Chan started a whirlwind when he told Communist government officials at a Chinese economic forum in Hainan:

“I’m gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we are not being controlled, we’ll just do what we want.”

Chan went farther, describing conditions in democratic Taiwan and relatively free Hong Kong as “chaotic.”

Public furor. These are the kind of statements that mindless Americans and Europeans who fancy themselves intellectuals toss around casually at Hollywood galas and Hague conferences, but the thinking classes of China are not amused.

Already, Albert Ho, a Hong Kong legislator is referring to the most popular movie star on Earth as “racist” for implying the Chinese are comfortable only in chains.

“People around the world are running their own countries,” Ho said. “Why can’t Chinese do the same?”

The Hong Kong Tourism Board, for which Chan has been unpaid ambassador since 1995, is hearing scores of complaints.

Mainland anger. Even on the totalitarian Chinese Mainland, where the freedom-repression debate has been simmering for at least the 20 years since pro-democracy demonstrators were murdered by the hundreds near Tiananmen Square, Chan’s sentiments are catching public scorn.

“I guess Jackie Chan has never experienced the lack of freedom, and has not been cruelly controlled,” commentator Li Hongbing wrote on The People’s Daily, a Communist Party -- yes, Communist Party -- online publication.

Hu Xingdou, Beijing Institute of Technology economics professor, added:

“It’s easy to sacrifice freedom when you’re treated like a V.I.P. or some high-level official every time you come to China. I’m sure Jackie Chan has never thought about the suffering of the little people who have no power.”

Boot licker. Some suspect that Chan was sucking up to the Communist dictatorship because his recent film, “Shinjuku Incident,” was banned in China as too violent. He appears willing to kiss any number of bloody jackboots if the slavemasters of China open his box office to 1.4 billion slaves.

What a sickening sell-out.

Frank Warner

Comments

[CJW]

Jackie's head has maybe taken one too many hits and his mind has gone to mush after doing too many Rush Hour movies with Chris Tucker.

[jj mollo]

In actuality, Freedom can be a very scary and risky thing. There's no telling what people will do once the chains come off. In fact, revolutions for freedom have sometimes opened the door to even worse repression. Without the Surge, that outcome might have applied in Iraq as well.

What Jackie Chan may be worried about is the mass disregard for the law that seems to infect the upwardly mobile class in the PRC. People spiking children's milk with melamine, or stealing land from peasants, represent some of the more disturbing aspects of the new capitalist culture of China. I don't see how it could be worse than it was under Mao or the Gang of Four, but there's a lot that could go wrong.

[Frank Warner]

That's just it. Freedom has its endless arguments, but oppression is a time bomb. It's only a matter of time before a totalitarian regime has to kill to maintain power. Tens of millions died in China. I'd call the current problem amnesia, but many Chinese weren't taught enough to have forgotten.

[David Holliday]

Those who are free justifying why others who are not free should not be free. It's just wrong.