The son of kung fu star Jackie Chan admitted drugs offences on Friday and was sentenced to six months in prison, a Beijing court said.
Jaycee Chan, who like his father has worked as an actor and singer, was detained in August after police said they found 100 grams of marijuana at his home in the Chinese capital.
Authorities charged the younger Chan with providing a venue for others to use drugs.
He went on trial at the Dongcheng District People’s Court on Friday and pleaded guilty, the court said on a verified social media account.
An hour and 22 minutes after proceedings began, it posted: “He was convicted. He has been sentenced to six months in jail and fined 2,000 RMB” ($320).
Chan and Ko Chen-tung, a Taiwanese actor also known as Kai Ko, both tested positive for marijuana according to state media, and Kai made tearful televised confessions.
At least 10 locally known stars have been detained on drug-related charges last year, state-run media have said.
The arrests have been seen by observers as part of a wider campaign on morals by Beijing, which has also targeted prostitution and the wider drugs trade.
Around 200 mainly domestic journalists at the Dongcheng court were allowed to set up their equipment outside the building as the defendant arrived, and reporters were invited to wait in a conference room in the court building, where staff gave updates while handing out bottled water.
The scene was far removed from trials of Chinese dissidents, which domestic journalists generally do not attend except for a select few from state-run outlets.
Foreign journalists at sensitive hearings are often aggressively targeted by plain clothes police if they go within even a few blocks of the courthouse.
Jaycee Chan has featured in several films but has not so far won the acclaim earned by his father, one of Asia’s best-known actors with a string of Hollywood hits to his name.
Shortly after his son’s detention, Jackie Chan father said in a post on China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo that he was “extremely angry and extremely shocked”.
“As a public figure, I am ashamed. As a father I feel terrible,” he said in August. – AFP
