Wrong and right

Wrong and right

Actor Jackie Chan's provocative talk about Chinese and freedom has fault and merit, writes Tom Plate

By Tom Plate
Pacific Perspectives Columnist

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Los Angeles --- That Jackie Chan is some kidder. I mean, you already knew that everybody's favorite kung-fu comic and actor was crazy... but certifiably insane?

Just the other day this legendary he-does-his-own-stunts man must have been fooling around when asserting the Chinese people do not need Western-style freedom and democracy. Right?

"I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not," Chan said. "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."

Huh? We think we know what happened. Like all good performers, the cagey and clever Chan was customizing his presentation to his audience: this was a hard-core business forum on the southern mainland. These were no unwashed democracy demonstrators. Business types, it is well known, care for bottom lines, long customer lines, new product lines -- and little for protest lines.

Chan had also said he was not impressed with the systems of Hong Kong and Taiwan. Freedom had made those societies "chaotic." I guess he meant to raise doubts about democracy in Taiwan, which now sees its former elected president (no less) in a jail cell for alleged corruption, and in Hong Kong, which has done well for itself ever since escaping the smothering colonial embrace of Mother England (a parliamentary democracy).

Nevertheless, in some quarters Chan's comments were viewed as no laughing matter. Hong Kong's pro-democracy legislator Leung Kwok-hung was un-amused: "He's insulted the Chinese people. Chinese people aren't pets. Chinese society needs a democratic system to protect human rights and rule of law." Albert Ho, another Hong Kong lawmaker, thundered, "People around the world are running their own countries. Why can't Chinese do the same?" Ho labeled Chan's comments "racist."

The truth is a lot of Chinese (though far from all, of course) might quietly concur with Chan. The mainland is a nation of 1.3 billion or so (almost four times the population size of the United States) that arguably might require certain societal constraints not needed in Sweden (population: nine million). China's tumultuous background makes people leery of anything that might trigger widespread "luan" (meaning "chaos," as in the Cultural Revolution).

Everyone knows that the key to democracy of the Western kind is a very large middle class. China, still a developing country (despite gargantuan economic gains in some regions), has many more poor people than middle class ones, whereas it's the reverse in the United States -- and even more so in Sweden. Nor do low literacy rates advance the cause of an educated citizenry capable of making wise electoral decisions.

Many Chinese know that their culture's Confucian tradition puts great value on a general respect for family ("father knows best"), governmental and/or corporate authority (usually, in fact, a father-figure), group loyalty (the community, the company) and individual discipline (a social force fading among Asia's young people but still a factor).

But aren't Western values of democracy, elections and individual freedom necessarily superior? Democracy -- many in Asia note -- doesn't save you from a lot of problems and too much freedom can be problematic. In China, to be sure, elections have only sparingly been tried. The historical fact is, as Singapore's sage Lee Kuan Yew put it years ago, "The Chinese people have never experienced a government based on counting heads, instead of chopping off heads."

Chan may be a jiving jokester but he's no insensitive political cad. In 1989 he was publicly critical of Beijing's Gestapo-style stomping of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations. But he and many other Asians recognize that quite often the West's reverence for democratic elections seems more pragmatic than principled. A few years ago in the Middle East, for instance, open elections in Gaza gave Hamas control of the legislature, but the West dismissed the result as lacking legitimacy and refused to recognize the new government. In 1992 in Algeria, the Islamic Party won the open election, but when the army engineered a successful coup to reverse the outcome, the West, including the United States, could barely manage an official tut-tut or two.

Asians take notice of convenient hypocrisies, like these examples and many others. The West prefers to endorse elections that produce the winners it wants. And Western political systems sometimes elect someone to the top job who didn't even get the most votes. As a proud and loyal American, I can say absolutely truthfully that I have no recollection whatsoever of what my many Chinese friends are referring to -- without at all beating around the Bush.

What I do know is that Jackie Chan is some kind of crazy kidder.

The views expressed above are those of the author and are not necessarily those of AsiaMedia or the UCLA Asia Institute.

Date Posted: 4/28/2009