the chinese were buying btc for a couple of reasons and one of them was property tax evasion
(property bought with btc  was not taxed )
but the main one was to bypass current laws on chinese citizens being restricted to moving money
out of china (its  illegal to transfer more than $50,000 out of china in a single year)


they can  claim to be speculators or whatever but i believe these reasons are more important to them
than any other reason to buy bitcoins