This is was obvious and i actually was surprised that it took them a while to ban it, since bitcoin has been very popular among Chinese and the government had no control over it, but i think that with the increase of the use of crypto in the world they have decided to create their own crypto and ban bitcoin and cryptocurrency just to force people to use their own version, just like they did with many internet sites and devices .
Well, this is no surprising at all because China always want to be the center of all even in the aspect of digital currencies. So what they did is to impose a force banning on all cryptos that can block the popularity of their own digital currency. They want to give focus to yuan but the citizens are not being cooperative since we all know that there are lot of Chinese people who are bag holders of bitcoin and other potential cryptos. Imposing a ban that will finally stop all crypto related activities but i think bitcoin will not be beaten by this, only those who are holders of it. Maybe going to nearby countries to transact cryptos is the best thing they could do.