Jack Ma has never been one to shy away from the limelight.

From starring in a Kung Fu film to appearing as Michael Jackson in a dance routine, the Chinese tycoon has delighted in his high public profile, surprising crowds with an apparently endless run of flamboyant displays and PR stunts.

Much of his $50.9bn (£37.5bn) fortune has been amassed from making huge bets on e-commerce. Ma founded Alibaba Group in 1999, when China had few internet users. Online payments service Alipay launched five years later, before regulators said such businesses would be allowed. Both long shots grew to dominate their industries.

But Ma's latest gambit has backfired. In October, he called Chinese regulators too conservative and urged them to be more innovative. In November, they halted the $35bn stock market debut of Ant Group, an online finance platform that grew out of Alipay.

According to reports, the Chinese government has even demanded that Alipay share its consumer data with the country's central bank or with a state-owned credit rating agency in order to enrich China's credit scoring system.

Meanwhile Donald Trump, undeterred by the impeding inauguration of his opponent Joe Biden, has just signed an executive order banning US companies from transacting with Alipay and seven other apps, including Tencent’s QQ Wallet and WeChat Pay.

During this time, Ma has been remarkably quiet. The tech billionaire was scheduled to appear in Business Heroes, an Apprentice-style TV contest. Despite filming several early episodes, he never turned up for the grand final in November. A publicity manager claimed Ma simply had scheduling conflicts.

“Beijing has ‘disappeared’ Jack Ma, which means any number of extrajudicial processes to detain him,” says Dan Blumenthal, director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and author of The China Nightmare: The Grand Ambitions of a Decaying State.

“This is a message to all entrepreneurs and businessmen not to become too successful or famous.”

CNBC on Tuesday reported that Ma is not missing but simply laying low for the time being.

International investors have privately breathed a sigh of relief, believing Ma’s silence is a tactical move to avoid further antagonising Chinese authorities. They have likened his current low profile to a period that followed Alibaba’s float in 2014. Ma was eventually forced to issue a public apology for insulting a rival.

The concern now is that the wave of international investment into China could slow to a trickle if Ma’s silence is seen as a public sign that the country is no longer open for business.

“Doing business in China is akin to doing business in a neighbourhood controlled by the Mafia,” says Grant Newsham, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, who has for years predicted Ma’s downfall.

“Things might go well for a while, even a long while, but then one day the mob decides it’s over,” Newsham adds. “Only Western financiers and the CEO class don’t seem to understand this.”

Ma’s disappearance is not the first time that Chinese businessmen have vanished after criticising Xi Jinping and his policies. “It will take down anyone who it sees as a threat, broadly defined,” Blumenthal says.

Ren Zhiqiang, a property tycoon, disappeared in March last year after criticising the government’s handling of the Covid-19 virus. He was later sentenced to 18 years in prison for alleged corruption, bribery and embezzlement of public funds.

On Tuesday, the former chairman of China's Huarong Asset Management was sentenced to death following a long-running bribery case. Lai Xiaomin, also a former banking regulator, had pleaded guilty to accepting bribes.

Many investors have for years privately cautioned executives against expanding to China or taking investment from the country, fearing the deals could lead to sanctions or theft of intellectual property.

"China is clearly playing more of a role in [companies'] direct operations, almost as if the Chinese Communist Party is now a board member of these companies,” says Abishur Prakash, head of the Centre for Innovating the Future.

Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that regulators in Beijing hope to force a resolution to their longstanding dispute with Alipay's own credit rating system, Zhima Credit (often referred to in English as Sesame Credit).

Though at one point considered for integration in China's broader social credit system, Ant has refused since 2015 to share its data with the People's Bank of China, and Zhima itself has reportedly been scaled back into something more like a loyalty programme.

To critics, the demand to pool information looks exactly like the kind of data diplomacy, or indeed data spycraft, that the US government is afraid of. Others argue that reliable ratings are necessary for the Chinese lending market to grow, and no more sinister than Western systems such as Experian, Equifax and the USA's Fico.

There are also growing signs of increasing Western retaliation against Chinese technology companies, a continuation of a trade war which has further reduced investor appetites in Chinese businesses.

Apparently intent on continuing his trade war with China right up until he leaves office, President Trump hit Ant and other companies again late on Tuesday night. Officials told Reuters that his order was intended to protect Americans' private data.

And although plans to remove three Chinese telecommunication companies from the New York Stock Exchange at Trump's behest were scrapped on Monday evening, the fact that it was contemplated must have rung alarm bells for Chinese firms and their partners.

This specific retaliation may have been withheld, at least for now, but the surprisingly low profile of Ma has led to a flurry of social media speculation outside of China. An old video of exiled billionaire Miles Kwok warning that Ma will end up in jail “or dead” as the government goes after Ant Financial is now gaining traction on Twitter.

At a Politburo conference in late December, where leaders of the China Communist Party convene to discuss important topics for the year ahead, analysts said it was imperative that the government tackled any “disorderly” flow of capital.

But authorities may decide not to trample too hard on rising stars. "The challenge that China's government may face is that by taking aim at these large homegrown technology companies, they could also be almost suffocating innovation, Prakash says.

“It's a message to the market that if you get too big, we're gonna come after you. And that's never an incentive for an entrepreneur with big ambitions.”