Christian Bale is Attacked by Undercover Chinese Red Guards (Video)
(Photo: REUTERS / China Daily)
British actor Christian Bale (L) and Chinese director Zhang Yimou attend the premiere of "The Flowers of War" in Beijing December 11, 2011. Zhang, one of China's best-known directors, is banking on heartthrob Bale to help boost the country's chances of winning an Oscar, with his latest film on a tragic chapter in the nation's history. "The Flowers of War," China's Academy Award entry for best foreign language film, centres around a mortician (Bale) who gets caught up in the 1937 Nanjing Massacre and has to save a group of school girls from the clutches of the Japanese.
In China to promote his new film, actor Christian Bale was assaulted by government-backed guards as he attempted to visit a prominent Chinese activist detained in his home in eastern Shandong Province.
keep visitors away, and a 200-strong army patrols the perimeters of his village round the clock.
"What I really wanted to do was to meet the man, shake his hand and say what an inspiration he is," Bale said. "I'm not being brave doing this. The local people who are standing up to authorities and insisting on going to visit Chen and his family and getting beaten up for it, and my understanding, getting detained for it and everything. I want to support what they are doing."
Hundreds of Chinese dissidents and human rights activists have attempted to visit Chen since he was released from prison, though none have been able to do so, the Los Angeles Times reported. Both United States Secretary of StateHillary Clinton and U.S. ambassador to China Gary Locke have called for Chen's release.
Bale's latest movie, "The Flowers of War," a Golden Globe-nominated Chinese film, premiered last Sunday. In it, Bale plays an American drifter who poses as a priest to save the lives of a group of Chinese schoolgirls during Japan's occupation of China before World War II.
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