Do we like Jay Chou?
Our score: 7 out of 10. No harmful words or acts of his own turned up and he has a record of quiet giving, but little on the record about LGBTQ+ issues, so we hold back from a higher score.
Jay Chou is the Taiwanese Mandopop star who needs no introduction across Asia. In March 2026 he finally dropped Children of the Sun, his first studio album since July 2022. He launched it at a packed Taipei press conference with 100 hand-picked fans in the room.
The title track's video is the stuff of legend: more than two years in production, nearly NT$100 million by TVBS's count, with New Zealand's Wētā Workshop on the art design. It nods to Klimt's The Kiss and Hopper's Nighthawks. The man clearly doesn't do things by halves.
The messiest recent stoush is a money dispute. In October 2025 Chou put a public ultimatum on Instagram aimed at a long-time magician friend, saying he had been “missing for a while”. Shanghai Daily reported it involved up to NT$100 million in crypto investments. His label reportedly received court documents, and the details are unconfirmed and unresolved.
The one political wobble on record is from 2019. Chou posted a friendly photo with Jackie Chan just after Chan said he knew nothing about the huge Hong Kong march, and some commenters were unhappy. As of that report he hadn't posted an apology or explanation. It's a bad-timing story, not a harm story.
The harm check is a quiet one. Searches on LGBTQ+ people, women, vaccines, climate and politics turned up no harmful words or campaigning from him, and no dodgy co-stars or studios. The flip side is that he rarely says much on any of it, so this is a pass by absence rather than by advocacy.
The good stuff is real. In April 2024 he and his wife gave NT$1 million to National Dong Hwa University after the Hualien earthquake, and NT$4 million to the Chinese Christian Relief Association for hardship households. He tends to do this without a fuss.