Jackie Chan's Remark

Actor and martial arts expert Jackie Chan recently committed a major gaffe (or at least that's how it is being reported), stating in essence that the Chinese people are better off without democracy because they need someone in control telling them what to do. Reading this story takes me in two different directions: one, what is a gaffe, and two, Chan's remark isn't unprecedented.

Is it really a gaffe if someone honestly expresses a heartfelt opinion about something, just because that opinion may be generally unpopular? I bet that I entertain all sorts of unpopular opinions about many things. The fact that, even with this blog going out to "all-points" on the globe, I am still relatively anonymous is the only essential difference between me and Jackie Chan in this regard. Apparently, fame can bring a strong demand to practice self-censorship in the interest of political correctness. All of us, I believe, entertain beliefs which, should they come out, would cause others to think less of us.

As far as Chan's implication that some people are better off under autocratic rule than under a democracy is concerned, many in the West have long embraced this notion, which I think is flawed but understandable. The usual rationale is that people in any country need to have their most basic needs, such as food, water, shelter, sanitation, and general civil order (i.e. no war or anarchy) met before they can understand and effectively participate in democratic self-government. The most glaring examples of the past century have been the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba under Communism, Italy under Mussolini's Fascism, and Germany under Hitler's Nazi rule. James Robeson, in the 1930s, extolled Stalin's Soviet Union as being good for its people. Charles Lindbergh (at least before World War II) expressed admiration for how Hitler had transformed Germany's economy in the 1930s. And John Lennon, in the 1970s, sympathized with Mao's China for the similar reasons.

Another reason that some prioritize other factors over democracy in foreign countries is that countries like the United States have gotten themselves embroiled in long-term military conflicts while "promoting democracy" in lands with little or no democratic tradition for their people to rely on. Hence we have South Vietnam in the fifties, sixties, and seventies. And Iraq and Afghanistan in our present time.

I say let's give Jackie Chan a break. He meant well, but the words just didn't come out right. And that's another problem with our world nowadays: any awkward sounding quote from any person with name recognition gets instantly spread over the planet and blown up completely out of proportion.

As for my own view on the subject, here it is: it isn't necessarily a simple choice between Western democracy and autocracy. Each society has its own historical traditions regarding how its people can express themselves politically. And that doesn't always involve periodic secret ballot elections and government structures patterned after our own. But on the other hand, there is absolutely nothing endemic to a society that would indicate that it could not incorporate Western democratic concepts into its system of government. Cases in point: Japan's radical transformation into a Western-style democracy after World War II and Eastern Europe's general embrace of the same after the Cold War. With Japan, it was nearly destroyed at the end of that terrible conflict and the U.S. had almost complete control over it for several years, thus enabling it to transform Japan's system of government. But in the midst of a war, it seems to me to be unrealistic to try to impose a new system on a society so embroiled in conflict. And that's what we're sadly seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan.