In January 2022, not long after The Matrix: Resurrections was released in Chinese theaters, it was announced that Keanu Reeves would soon be attending a benefit concert for Tibet House.
At its website, Tibet House says that it “was founded at the request of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who at the inauguration in 1987 stated his wish for a long-term cultural institution to ensure the survival of Tibetan civilization and culture.” Since this mission flouts the wishes and demands of the Chinese government, which has worked for decades to subjugate the Tibetan people and which castigates the Dalai Lama as a champion of Tibetan independence, an anti-Reeves uproar promptly ensued.
The Los Angeles Times reported (March 24, 2022):
Given that Beijing vehemently rejects any claims of Tibetan independence and views the Nobel Peace Prize laureate as a dangerous “separatist,” the news enraged Chinese nationalists, who stormed social media with insults, vowing to boycott the film. It remained in theaters, however, and March 3 came and went with no apparent consequences for Reeves.
But the axe has now fallen—albeit more quietly than many expected.
Last Monday, China’s major streamers removed the vast majority of Reeves’ filmography from their sites and wiped search results related to his name in Chinese—the cumbersome transliteration “Jinu Liweisi.”
Reeves will do okay despite losing access to the mainland Chinese film market. The latest installment of his John Wick thrillers, “John Wick: Chapter 4,” earned $425 million by May 2023, so that the series as a whole has now earned over a billion dollars at the box office. “Chapter 4” has been released in many countries, including, according to IMDb, Hong Kong (which is a part of China). But it has not been shown in the theaters of mainland China.
