Anyway, it looks to me like China's move against bitcoin is a defensive one defending the yuan. They have been gearing up to
unleash the yuan onto the global stage, and don't need a decentralized, non-governmental currency competing with the yuan in the domestic market. Obviously, bitcoin is innately superior to fiat currency and they want to prevent what essentially could become a run on the yuan in favor of bitcoin
True, the Chinese merely classified BTC as a commodity and banned it as a currency as a protectionist measure. They would be killing a lot of trade if they banned it outright.
http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/20/btc-china-ceo-attempts-to-calm-the-bitcoin-market-after-rmb-deposit-shutdown/Umm, just how can the shadow economy have an official anything?
lol agreed, that's an oxymoron.
Also BTC is open-source (they used it to catch the guys from Silk Road) so I dunno how viable it is to use BTC for "black market" purposes.