Hardly mysterious: she was "disappeared" by the authorities. Given the total lack of communication she is probably dead. We are no more likely to find out what happened than to find what really happened at Tiananmen. Perhaps in half a lifetime's time one of the survivors of the next revolution will tell us.
> Then, on October 3, Fan reappeared as suddenly as she had vanished. According to the South China Morning Post, she had been held under a form of detention known as “residential surveillance,” at a holiday resort in a suburb of Jiangsu...
> After her release, Fan issued an obsequious apology on social media. Saying she had endured “an unprecedented amount of pain,” she said she felt “ashamed and guilty” for not “setting a good example for society and the industry.”...
> That same day, tax authorities reported that Fan had declared only a third of her $4.4 million salary for Air Strike, a Chinese action film starring Bruce Willis. The movie’s release was canceled, and a warrant was issued for one of its investors...
They probably have her in an re-education center. She's also being made an example off to make the other actors/actresses more honest and take less salary for social stability.
Basically by law in China, only 40% of a movie's budget can be for actors/actresses. A max of 70% of the 40% for actors/actresses can be paid to a single actor/actresses. But you have these huge stars like Fan Bingbing who wants more, so what do you do? You have two contracts, an official one with lower salary that is also reported to the government and an unofficial one that's really how much they are paid.
Hardly.
Quotes from OP:
Since her release last October, Fan has consciously kept a low profile. (She and her agency declined to speak with VANITY FAIR for this story.) Her first post on social media after her public apology was an overt display of fealty to the Chinese government. On November 17, when a director made a pro-Taiwan comment at the Golden Horse Awards, Fan shared a pro-China post from the Communist youth league. “China,” she said, “cannot miss out on any inch.”
Fan, for her part, appears to be quietly plotting a comeback. Throughout the crisis, her production company never shut its doors. “Of course she lost a lot of money,” said Fang, the producer. “But she’s not completely depressed.” Fang and Li, Fan’s best friend and frequent collaborator, have been discussing future projects for their favorite star. When I asked Li why she would risk casting Fan, she told me that the anguish Fan has gone through would become the well she draws from. “Nobody can be a better actress than her,” Li said.
Not long ago, Fan had drinks with her friend Li, who told me that they discussed Fan’s ordeal. If the best art reflects its times, the two concluded, who better to cast as a lead than Fan Ye herself?
Fan laughed at her luck. Perhaps there was an upside to becoming the world’s most celebrated missing person. “I worked so hard,” she told her friend, “and this is how I become famous.”
Disappearing someone means you dont know why they disappeared. You guess, and so your own fears will give you the FUD needed to avoid pissing off the authorities. It's a more efficient and effective tactic.
The prosecution rate is over 99% in China. That's hardly a challenge.
If you don't know, then how can you know when you aren't breaking any laws?
I mean - you could be doing everything "by the book" - but then they "make a law" that makes it illegal to do something which you were doing fine the day before, but they don't tell you about that law- then they haul you in...
And seriously, nobody can really keep ahead of every law - even in western countries - it's all a sham, really; not even judges nor prosecutors are aware of all the laws. I don't even think legislators know them all. There's just way too many; at any point all of us are breaking some kind of law at some level. When nobody can honestly know the law, not even those who are supposed to interpret it, or create it, or prosecute it, it's lost its original purpose, and has become nothing more than a means of control thru fear.
I guess in this way, the "west" isn't that much different than China, we just each pretend about different things.
you don't. You constantly appease the party, constantly on the look out for things that could go wrong, and constantly do proactive things to make yourself useful to the party, and don't even associate with individuals who even slightly hints at critisizing the party.
now everyone else eager to pay back
The system was instituted in 2012, under President Xi Jinping, making it legal for the Chinese secret police to detain anyone charged with endangering state security or committing corruption and hold them at an undisclosed location for up to six months without access to lawyers or family members.