Is anyone else incensed by Jackie Chan's comments?

Most irresponsible statement from him ever.

I partially agree with him. I believe that freedom should be a common goal amongst everyone, no matter what country or ethnicity. However, freedom cannot be realistically achieved in a short period of time without considerable preparations. The part where I agree with Jackie, is that politics in Hong Kong and Taiwan really are quite chaotic, especially the latter. I'm not criticizing Taiwan, but throwing chairs and huge melees breaking out in their legislature meetings is very common. In Hong Kong, the politicians and lawmakers are very very educated (most of them studied in Britain), but the biggest problem is that most of their 7 million population either don't understand, or don't care about politics. Complete democracy and total political freedom is useless and will fail if the people given the freedoms do not understand politics and who they are voting for.

I believe that if Hong Kong people want democracy and the right to vote, they must start taking politics seriously and become a responsible citizen. Otherwise, politicians can just lie, coax, buy, and bribe their way into office.

I actually agree with him. Just to clarify, his "be controlled" doesn't mean slavery, I think that's where most misunderstandings came about. "Controlled" means to be guided by the hand.

China is a large country with a lot of people - people of different financial, educational, religious, etc. background. If complete freedom is given at this point, it'll be nothing but chaotic. "Chaotic" as in nothing will get done without people fighting, literally, ie. at Parliament a la Taiwan. Yes, everyone should be able to do whatever s/he wants whenever s/he wants, but still there has to be boundaries and limits. And before you let the people roam free, you need to know that the people has the capability to understand and agree on "commonly accepted" boundaries and limits. That's what China is working on right now.

China is still a developing country. It's up there financially with the big guys in the world, but when you look at the country itself, it has just began to open more doors for the locals - education, health care, a better quality of life, etc. It's still working towards the standards of that in the western countries.

There are so much going on in China that outsiders cannot easily comprehend. The Tienanmen incident in 1989 is a good example. What we all saw was just the clips they showed on CNN, but the history or events that led up to the incident, I am sure not many of us knows. It's not as simple as students protesting for democracy...

All western countries have went through a time in history where their country was ran by nothing but chaos, the USA included. But it all happened way back then for these countries, where they can afford the decades to get things back on track. At this time and age, I am not sure if any country would make radical changes and spend decades to "get things back on track" and risk falling behind from other countries. In order to provide what's necessary for the Chinese people (a better standard of living, employment/education/healthcare/financial opportunities that rivals that of the West), China must do everything it can to keep up with the West. This is why the only changes that China can afford to make is small little steps, and not complete freedom and democracy in one leap.

I'm not a Chinese and I'm deeply hurt by the comments of Chan.

All artists/intellectuals have a moral responsibility to use their position to speak against the wrong-doings of Communist Party, and Jackie Chan has surely failed there.

Only slaves are coerced and controlled, and Chinese people don't deserve to be called slaves.

Not at all, he's entitiled to his opinion and speaks from experience. All countries have a certain amount of "control" over their citizens. I guess Jackie is getting older and more conservative and doesn't like what he sees as a degradation of society in HK and Taiwan. If that's what he sincerely feels, he certainly has a right to express it. Let's just hope that his right to expression isn't one of the controls he's talking about.

I think Jackie Chan is only expressing his view and this is only his view. Actually he cannot express as Chinese as a whole, especially those in Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong that those people need to be controlled. There are many people that needs to be controlled in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and anywhere in this world, especially those terrorist. Not all people need to be controlled actually as many others had be controlled too much also. So it depends on case by case basis and not the whole race nor nationality.

Western-style democracy is the illusion of public control over government, so the government can control the public.

How many US Congressmen are millionaires? Virtually all of them.

How much money did Barack Obama earn from his book deal last year? Over $2 million.

Western-style democracy is about wealthy elites letting the public decide which wealthy candidates will run the country. Anyone who believes otherwise is deluded.

At least China does not pretend to be something that it is not. America is the truly the land of political illusion.

Yes, I am strongly opposed to his comments about freedom. I hope he should shut up next time. Now many mainland chinese people are swearing at him.

i'm a foreigner and i'm both hands for Jackie...
cool guy, wise man...
my respect to him grew up significantly...

I like Jackie, he is just being honest.
The Chinese invented bureaucracy, perhaps more layers of goverment provides comfort for some of them. They are getting more freedoms, as their socialist government relaxes some economic and social controls, now they will have to develop the social mores required to handle the legal freedoms.