Jackie Chan may be good at kung fu, but he sometimes takes aim at the wrong targets. Take his recent head-punch to the democratic ideals enjoyed in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

"I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not," he told an audience at a regional economic forum in southern China Saturday. "If you're too free, you're like the way Hong Kong is now. It's very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic." He continued: "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."

Mr. Chan, a Hong-Kong born actor of "Rush Hour" fame, isn't the first to claim that Asians would rather have prosperity and stability than political freedoms. (Think Singapore.) This implies, wrongly, that Asians are somehow incapable of genuine self-rule and need to be "led" by their superiors. It also ignores the vast economic gains made by free nations compared with their authoritarian counterparts.

Mr. Chan has in the past spoken out against Beijing's massacre of democracy advocates in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. In recent years, however, the actor has softened his position on China's leadership. In 2004, he called Taiwan's presidential election a "joke," although he later apologized.

Mr. Chan's latest comments were denounced in Hong Kong and Taiwan. "It's really shameless," Hong Kong legislator Leung Kwok-hung said, "his success in Hong Kong was the product of the freedom of expression [here]." In Taiwan, Bi-Khim Hsiao, international affairs director for the Democratic Progressive Party, called the comments "counterproductive to all the efforts of the many freedom fighters around the region." Neither government dignified Mr. Chan's jabs with a formal response.