The 55-year-old Hong Kong actor was participating in a panel at the annual Boao Forum on Saturday when he was asked to discuss censorship and restrictions on filmmakers in China. He expanded his comments to include society in general.
'I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not,' Chan said.
'I'm really confused now. If you're too free, you're like the way Hong Kong is now. It's very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic.'
Chan added: 'I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want.' --
'I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not,' Chan said.
'I'm really confused now. If you're too free, you're like the way Hong Kong is now. It's very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic.'
Chan added: 'I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want.' --
Obviously, Jackie Chan isn’t the person you immediately look to for insightful political commentary but you think he’d be able to tell a feature from a bug. Well, it is the classic Asian apologia for dictatorship: the Chinese are too individualistic to be able to sustain freedom.
The Straits Times notes that his comments “drew applause from an audience of business leaders.” I wonder how they'll go down in Hong Kong.
it may be relevant that chan spent his childhood at the beijing opera school, which (i believe?) runs or then ran a ruthlessly strict disciplinary regime, the better to turn wayward teenage pupils into awesome grown-up athletes and performers
so i can imagine he has a bit of a "hard knocks and pitiless masters got me where i am" attitude
(i'm sad to read this though, i like chan on the whole: he's invented a nice twist on the tiresome "maverick cop who gets things done by breaking the rules" meme, in which the maverick cop is a drunken idiot who gets most things done by clumsy accident -- i dare there's more of his unarticulated politics in that story than there is in his after-dinner speeches)
Posted by: belle le triste | April 19, 2009 at 03:04 PM
'I'm really confused now. If you're too free, you're like the way Hong Kong is now. It's very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic.'
While the sixty-year history of the People's Republic of China is one of unbroken calm, order, and tranquillity, of course.
Posted by: ajay | April 20, 2009 at 10:16 AM
'I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not'. What a question! It seems to me that the person who asks such questions doesn't really know what absence of freedom means. When I heard the interviews of people who spent at least some time in prisons (http://rapid4me.com rapidshare) I had a feeling that they didn't live at all.
Posted by: Dansy | October 09, 2009 at 07:20 PM