Imagine if Jennifer Lawrence or Scarlett Johansson went missing and nobody knew where they had gone – even three months later. That is what happened to Fan Bingbing.

Fan is one of China’s best known and highest-paid actors, thanks to a string of domestic hits such as Cell Phone and Double Xposure, and small roles in Iron Man 3 and X-Men: Days of Future Past. The 37-year-old was on the jury of the Cannes film festival last year, and is set to star in a new thriller opposite Jessica Chastain and Penelope Cruz.

On 2 July this year she posted details of a visit to a children’s hospital in Tibet on Weibo (China’s answer to Twitter). Then her account went dead, leaving her 63 million followers, and pretty much the rest of China, wondering where she had gone. Had Fan been abducted? Arrested? Was she just taking a career break? The questions piled up, then tipped over into conspiracy theory. There were baseless rumours such as she had fled to the US, with the help of Jackie Chan. That she and husband Li Chen gambled away $12m (£9.2m) in three days in Las Vegas. That she was being held in a military prison in Beijing after having an affair with Chinese vice-president Wang Qishan. “Someone is trying to use Fan Bingbing to get to Wang Qishan,” exiled businessman Guo Wengui told reporters. Fan strenuously denied the affair and was suing Guo at the time of her disappearance. Jackie Chan, who had starred with Fan in his 2016 movie Skiptrace, denied all knowledge of Fan’s whereabouts.

Fan Bingbing in 2014’s X-Men: Days Of Future Past. Photograph: 20th Century Fox/Marvel Entertainment/Dune Entertainment/Bad Hat Harry/Marv Films/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock

The most credible rumour may have been that Fan was in trouble with the tax office, which is not quite as prosaic as it sounds. Shortly before her disappearance, the popular TV presenter Cui Yongyuan posted on social media what appeared to be two separate contracts for Fan’s work on her forthcoming movie Air Strike, starring Bruce Willis. One contract was apparently for 10m yuan (£1.3m); the other for 60m yuan (£7.6m). The implication presumably was that this was a “yin-yang contract” – two for the same job. The smaller figure, it was implied, was declared to the tax office; the larger one purported to indicate what the star was actually paid. Fan denied the allegation, and Cui promptly retracted it, but the authorities reportedly began to investigate shortly before Fan went off the radar.

This Wednesday, the mystery was apparently partly explained with the news that Fan and her companies had been ordered to pay 883m yuan (£112m) in unpaid taxes and fines. She has not been charged with any crime.

Fan’s first public communication since July was a grovelling confession on Weibo: “For a long time, I did not distinguish between national, social and personal interests,” she wrote. “As a public figure, I should abide by the law, and play a leading role in society and industry … Without the good policies of the party and the state, and without the love of the people, there would be no Fan Bingbing.” In short, Fan seems to have been made an example of.

China’s movie industry has mushroomed over the past decade. In 2007, its total box office was just over 3bn yuan (£335m); last year it was 56bn yuan (£6.4bn). It is poised to overtake the US as the world’s biggest film territory. This cultural explosion has brought in a new breed of moneyed celebrity, some of whom have no inhibitions about its wealth.

Three years ago, for example, the nation was gripped by the wedding of high-profile actor Huang Xiaoming to Hong Kong-born Yang Ying – AKA Angelababy, who is often considered China’s answer to Kim Kardashian (Kim has 118 million followers on Instagram; Angelababy has 96 million followers on Weibo). The event, which was livestreamed on the internet, was like a royal wedding, with a comparable budget – an estimated $31m (£24m). There was a 10ft wedding cake, a holographic castle, a $1.5m (£1.1m) wedding ring, a custom Dior dress that took five months to make and goodie bags including mobile phones for the 2,000 guests.

But this summer the authorities apparently decided to take action. Already the content of Chinese films is carefully vetted and must promote “core socialist values”. Then, in June, official agencies announced a joint clampdown on actors’ pay, citing not only tax evasion but “money worship”, “the youth blindly chasing celebrities” and “distorted social values”. In August, nine major production companies issued a joint pledge to cap actors’ salaries at 40% of total production costs, and lead actors’ salaries at 70% of the cast’s total pay. The same month, Huang was linked to a scandal involving share-price manipulation and questioned by the authorities. He denied any involvement, but still publicly apologised for his “indiscretion in wealth management”. Then, last month, a Beijing university published the Film and Television Star Social Responsibility Report, ranking the 100 top celebrities. Fan Bingbing came last. The authorities have warned that others will face penalties and “administrative punishment” like Fan if they do not “undergo self-examination and make remedial payments to taxation authorities” before the end of the year.

Fan Bingbing in March, promoting her eyewear range in Shanghai. Photograph: VCG via Getty Images

More than the regulatory crackdown, it is the nature of Fan’s disappearance that has sent a jolt through Chinese society. According to reports, Fan was detained at a “holiday resort” in Wuxi, under a 2013 legal framework known as “residential surveillance at a designated location”. It is essentially a legalistic euphemism for disappearance and forced detention. “In practice it often means someone is held in secret and denied all contact with the outside world,” says Michael Caster, a human rights advocate and editor of The Peoples Republic of the Disappeared, a collection of first-hand accounts of victims of such forced detentions. “Many of them were subject to one form of torture or another, from prolonged sleep deprivation to physical pain, beatings, stress positions, mental abuse and threatening family members.” In many cases, the outcome is forced confessions.

Until now, forced detentions have been used against suspected political dissidents and human rights defenders, such as Caster’s former colleague, lawyer Wang Quanzhang, who went missing in 2015 and has not been seen since. In another case, Chen Yong, a driver for a Fujian official, disappeared in April. A month later, his family were told he was dead.

Applying such blunt force to the entertainment industry would be new, but not entirely out of character. “President Xi Jinping has made it very clear that he wants to do away with elites and the fetishism around money and certain forms of power,” says Caster. “If you have people looking to what celebrities do and say online versus what the party dictates, that may be very plausibly part of it. Anything that rises to a level of social, economic or political power is seen as a threat to the supremacy of the Communist party.” We are unlikely to ever know what exactly Fan Bingbing underwent, but the implication is clear: if the authorities can get to the biggest celebrity in the land, they can get to anyone.