This lacks the background of why the Chinese want to invest abroad so much. I'll try to provide a little: Traditionally, In Chinese society it's expected that

This lacks the background of why the Chinese want to invest abroad so much. I'll try to provide a little: Traditionally, In Chinese society it's expected that in your old age you will be cared for by your children. That is, you don't really need retirement savings. Thanks to social change and the one-child policy, millions of Chinese don't believe that this will work for them. So, they are facing either working until they drop (if they can find some place to keep working in, and that's a big if), or saving for retirement. Saving for retirement is very hard because the Chinese government has intentionally made it almost impossible. The currency inflates quickly enough that storing as cash is completely pointless. There are very strong currency controls that block any investment into foreign companies -- and even into profitable parts of local ones. The internal stock market that the Chinese can invest in is a total scam. This only leaves real estate (which is believed to be in a huge bubble), and the technically illegal shadow banking system, which itself is having trouble. So in summary, the Chinese middle class is flush in cash, and desperately wants to put it somewhere, anywhere. How large of a part Bitcoin will play in this will likely depend on threatened the Chinese government will be of it. While the system is technically sound, I have little faith that it could survive the Chinese government using informants and executions against anyone taking in RMB and selling BTC. However, as of right now, most of the shadow banking system is illegal, but it's so large (nearing the GDP of the country) that the government simply doesn't dare do anything about it. Will the same happen to BTC being used to move wealth across the border?