Charles "Blackie" Chen or Chen Chien-Chou (born 2 May 1977) is a Taiwanese TV celebrity, basketball player and sports manager. He is the founder of the Taiwanese professional basketball league P. League+.
Chen Chien-Chou made the Chinese Taipei junior national team when he was 18 and played in the 1995 ABC Under-18 Championship, where they finished 5th.
Although only 190 cm (short for even Taiwanese basketball player standards), Chen played in the paint. He modeled his game after Charles Barkley, also an undersized big man (hence his English name of "Charles Chen"). In 1999, after missing the cut for the Chinese Taipei national basketball team, he played for the B national team at the William Jones Cup.
Later, playing for a club in the Singaporean league (where he led the league in scoring and rebounding), he tore his anterior cruciate ligament for the second time in an accident. His basketball career ended prematurely as a result.
In 2020, along with Taipei Fubon Braves, Formosa Dreamers, Hsinchu Lioneers, and Taoyuan Airape, he founded a Taiwanese professional basketball league, P. League+, and was the CEO.
Chen became a performing artist, and a host of numerous variety shows. Because of his dark skin, he has come to be known by the nickname "Blackie", it is also because the name rhymes with Jackie Chan, in which they both are trained in judo, which Blackie obtained a blue belt. He has been in a relationship with Christine Fan for 10 years, before finally getting engaged in 2010. They were married in Taipei on May 7, 2011.
Currently the team leader and head of marketing for the Taiwan Beer Basketball Team, Chen directed a 2008 documentary entitled Attitude () on the team's quest to become Super Basketball League champion. The documentary was well received and earned him widespread acclaim and accolades from the Taiwanese film industry. Many consider it the high-water mark of Taiwanese sports related documentary films.
Chen is also a television personality and host for several television shows. He is slated to play Peng Dehuai in the highly anticipated miniseries Untold Stories of 1949, to be produced for HBO Asia.
Chen, along with his wife Christine Fan, are also the co-founder and spokespeople for the Love Life campaign, after becoming a Christian, as influenced by her mother-in-law while Christine was recovering from severe depression and mild anorexia.
In 2023, Taiwanese entertainer Tina Chou (å¨å®ÂéÂÂ), known by her stage name "Big Tooth" (大çÂÂ), alleged Chen had sexually harassed her eleven years ago in Hong Kong. In support of Chou, Taiwanese entertainer Yuan Kuo (éÂÂæºÂå Â) revealed that she also had experienced an attempted sexual assault by Chen. Chen denied those accusations but resigned from the CEO of the Taiwanese professional basketball league P. League+. He and his wife Christine Fan filed a criminal defamation lawsuit against Chou asking for reputation damages of 10,000,000 TWD. The Taipei District Prosecutors Office ruled in favor of Chou, finding that she had not fabricated any facts, and dismissed the case with a decision of non-prosecution.