Jackie Chan to sue over defamation

• Source: Global Times
• [00:36 September 08 2010]
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By Liu Dong

The Jackie Chan Charitable Foundation is preparing to sue the Shanghai Overseas Chinese News for defamation, after the newspaper printed last Friday that the Hong Kong movie star failed to fulfill his promise to help rebuild Beichuan Middle School in Sichuan Province.

"We've got our lawyers working the case as we speak," a woman surnamed Mao, the assistant of the Jackie Chan Charitable Foundation's secretary-general Dang Qun, told the Global Times Tuesday, after Dang declined to comment further on the situation. "Jackie Chan thinks it's important to pursue this because the paper has ruined his reputation."

The move comes after the newspaper alleged that Chan failed to contribute proceeds from the 15.3 million yuan ($2.25 million) in Chinese mainland box office sales re-ported from his movie Little Big Soldier in March. The report said that Chan had last May, on a trip to the area to mark the one-year anniversary of the tragic 2008 Sichuan earthquake, vowed to donate profits from his film to the reconstruction of the Beichuan county school before it was completed on August 17.

With a spokesperson surnamed Li from the Beichuan Middle School Tuesday confirming that it had not received any donations from the foundation, the Jackie Chan Charitable Foundation said this was the case because it takes time for the money to be transferred, saying that Chan himself has yet to be paid for his movie.

The editor of the report in question defended the report Tuesday, saying that it would not be printing a retraction.

"We're not afraid of a lawsuit because every fact in our story was based on the truth," Wang Xiaobo, an editor at Shanghai Overseas Chinese News, told the Global Times Tuesday. "The foundation is just making up an excuse about a delayed money transfer because we exposed that Chan failed to deliver on his promise."

Chan's story remained on the front page of the newspaper's website last night.

Meanwhile, Wang Kuisong, a spokesperson for the Overseas Chinese Foundation of China, the organization in charge of the finances for the reconstruction of Beichuan Middle School, said Tuesday that it was never contacted by the Jackie Chan Charitable Foundation about a donation.

According to Gu Xiaoming, a professor from Fudan University, who has been following the news, the damage has already been done.

"Fans will always wonder about the sincerity of his actions," he told the Global Times Tuesday.