What is happening right now with the value of Bitcoin can all be partly traced to China. Chinese hold a big portion of the quantity of Bitcoin now circulating globally...they can manipulate its value and whatever they do that can affect Bitcoin will have a direct and indirect impact on its market value. Not to mention the fact that pronouncements from the China government in relation to Bitcoin can send the value of Bitcoin tumbling down or rolling up.
And this leads me into thinking...is Bitcoin now tied to China and is there something we can do about it?
There isn't anything we can do. Bitcoin mining is concentrated in China because the miners have deals to get free electricity from the chinese govt. There is no way that can be duplicated in the rest of the world.
The chinese exchanges are also odd, they don't apply trading fees, and there is a suspicion that their model isn't really about bitcoin (though they want people to deposit both bitcoin and fiat to their exchanges), but using the money that has been deposited to made shadow loans in the shadow banking system. When stuff is free, you are the product. If you think about a normal bank, it takes in desposits from savers and then makes loans. Their chinese exchange model seems to be, get people to desposit both fiat and bitcoin, and keep their money on the exchange via no-fee trading, and meanwhile that money is being used as a base to lend out to the real economy via shadow banking at high interest rates.
What will happen in the end is that an alt with a different model (one that doesn't need so much electricity and equipment to mine) and one that is better distributed geographically, will come forward and take bitcoin's crown. The western exchanges are already thinking on these lines, that is why GDAX, Kraken, and so on offer alt trading. They have basically given up on bitcoin and are conscious that an alt might take it's place and they are getting ready by having alts on their exchanges, so it works smoothly with what they've already set-up with links to bank accounts, payment processors and so on.