Taiwaness star Chen Chien-Chou陳建州 (His facebook page), commonly known as "黑人" (blackman), drew attention two month ago for a video with him proposing to his girlfriend Christine Fan 范瑋琪 at an NBA game. The couple is very active in charity work and is highly respected in the Chinese entertainment circle.
This week, the basketball-player-turned-actor's name is on headline again, but in a controversial way. He has been leading a charity project Love Life dedicated to empowering handicapped kids. A newspaper (followed by some TV programs) in Taiwan accused him of "keeping a part" of the funds raised. The controversy was that the charity T-shirts sold by his project were produced by a company he owns, which seems to be making a profit from the revenue besides donations to Love Life. The fact was Chen and Love Life NEVER publicly promised to donate all earnings to charity work from the very beginning, and they DID dedicate most earnings to Love Life. However, this event was impacting enough to cause some doubts in the accountability and transparency of Chen's well-intended charity work.
The day before yesterday, one of the many stars invited to participate in the project Dee Hsu (徐熙娣 aka 小S) called into a live TV discussion to defend for her close friend Chen, and started a fierce debate with TV commentator Clara Chou 周玉蔻. Dee Hsu reconfirmed the point that they did not force anyone to buy the half-commercial half-charitable T-shirts, nor did they ever promote them with a commitment of 100% charity.
The video became hot on line within hours.
Including Chen, many other artists feel morally misunderstood by the public. It seems most netizens are supporting the philanthropic stars. However, this can be a lesson for celebrities running charity works. Rather than being misunderstood and cry for some empathy later, they may want to build the right public credibility from the very beginning.
