It should have been the week’s big China story. After all, the new tariffs President Donald Trump slapped on $200 billion of Chinese imports marked a drastic escalation of a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies. And Beijing may well have wanted its retaliatory tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods to top the news agenda. But in China, there was a more burning topic: Where on earth is Fan Bingbing?
Fan, 37, is China’s best-known actress and the nation’s highest-paid celebrity for four years running, earning a reported $43 million last year. She was featured in TIME’s list of the 100 most influential people in 2017 and has also broken into Hollywood, starring in X-Men: Days of Future Past and Iron Man 3. She was soon to begin filming a spy thriller with Penelope Cruz. But since June, China’s biggest star has not been seen in public.
Some speculate Fan is in hiding, but most agree her disappearance seems tied to leaks on Chinese social media in late May of so-called yin ya..