Jackie Chan, Feng Xiaogang Seek Less Censorship in China as Communist Leaders Meet

Hong Kong actor/director Jackie Chan and leading mainland Chinese director Feng Xiaogang made passionate pleas for less censorship of their films in China at a high-level Communist Party meeting in Beijing.

Chinas annual rubber-stamp legislature, the National Peoples Congress, is taking place in the Chinese capital right now, and the two men are among a number of top industry figures on an advisory body to the parliament, called the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conferences (CPPCC).

Chan, whose action thriller Police Story 2013 recently topped the box office charts in China, is a Hong Kong delegate at the event, and he was unusually forthright in criticizing censorship.

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I know theres a risk to saying this, but I dont care now, because it seems normal that I speak inappropriately. If a movie is heavily censored, cutting all the sharp edges and corners, its box-office performance will suffer drastically, Chan said as quoted by the South China Morning Post.

The comments are a little surprising coming from Chan as he generally tends to toe the party line on cultural matters, and he has angered people in Hong Kong by saying that they complain too much about China and talk too much about getting more democracy.

Chan said that censorship had disastrous results for its investors and producers.

I have a couple of director friends [who went] bankrupt because of poor box-office results," he said. "Last year, China box office earnings reached 21.7 billion yuan ($3.6 billion), of which 17.1 billion ($2.8 billion) was from domestic movies. Within five to six years, China will be the biggest market. However, if Chinese films dont take marketization seriously, it will hardly have the chance to surpass Hollywood."

He was speaking after his friend and colleague Feng, who directed movies like the recent box office success, Personal Tailor, as well as Cellphone and Assembly, and who last November immortalized his hands and feet in cement at TCL Chinese Theatre, called for more clarity in how censorship was applied.

Dont make directors tremble with fear every day like [theyre] walking on thin ice, Feng told a gathering on the fringes of the CPPCC in the Beijing International Hotel.

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Jackie Chan, Feng Xiaogang Seek Less Censorship in China as Communist Leaders Meet