One last news so they can force weak hands to dump and then buy bitcoins on the cheap. That is, if they don't further try to ruin it. They've already banned ICOs and are now planning to shut down exchanges, where do you think the miners will be able to cash out their earned bitcoins? Oh.... what if there'll be no mines after this?
I don't think this is anything new. If I'm not mistaken China already did that in the past. I think it will of course affect the price of BTC, because of all those panic sellers, and all of those that just use BTC to trade. The thing is, that China, although having a lot of users with BTC, does not really control them, and are not even banning them. So BTC will continue to be a good way of holding value. So the price will go down a little, and them will just recover, because the guys that know the true value of BTC, will just hold them around the world.
They can go apeshit further and close mines. They don't need to ban bitcoins to deal it a heavy blow. I wonder if the large mines close, if it'll become profitable to mine at home again.