I think China's just making threats again to keep their people quiet. If they do ban it, the people will find another way regardless.

There's always another place looking to bring in the miners, whether it's up north or somewhere cheap. I think that they'd also want to look for somewhere with a fast connection speed. Doesn't google have data farms out in Iceland? That might explain why google drive is so slow sometimes, the data has to cross the ocean and back!

But with coin mining becoming less profitable, it might be hard to find a suitable solution. Unless the lightening network has a better alternative...