Jackie Chan opens can of worms.
There’s a lively discussion going on at the “Room for Debate” blog at the New York Times. I’d heard about Jackie Chan’s remarks, but the issues brought up in the comments to this blog post provided so many different perspectives that I thought I should post them here. From questioning whether Jackie Chan was mistranslated (not to mention misquoted or taken out of context) to how his statements might benefit his career, the commenters make one thing clear: We may not know exactly what Chan meant to say and what context he said it in, but people all over the world sure have diverse opinions about how China, and humans in general, should be governed (or not governed at all).
I’m not able to provide any wisdom as to whether Chan was saying “we Chinese need to be controlled” or “The Chinese need to be regulated,” but the fact that he apparently also mentioned Hong Kong and Taiwan has made for even more discussion. I’m not siding with any of the commenters, but I found the comments coming from people living in China to be interesting. There’s not much cohesiveness to the discussion as Chan seems to have incited every person with an opinion about mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Communism, and humanity to weigh in.
No clue if Chan’s career or image will suffer as a result of this. But I think instead of weighing in on such divisive matters he should stick to making sure his new movies that are better than the Forbidden Kingdom. Please.
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Tags: china, controversy, film, hong kong, media, politics, taiwanese
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