If the Chinese government takes over bitcoin mines

[ValVikram]

McAfee said they wont

[BitFinnese]

McAfee said they wont

Or maybe the possibility that they will.  Who knows, Chinese government are unpredictable and at the same time use any kind of strategy to take advantage of any resources that can boost their economy.  and this time it is possible that they will use Bitcoin or Bitcoin miners that can probably be confiscated once they set another aggressive action towards Bitcoin.  There are rumor that they are looking at bitcoin miners now after making these Bitcoin exchanges in China to close.

[Razick]

I doubt the Chinese government would stoop this low.

What they are doing is creating FUD to lower the price and get cheap Bitcoins as a result. It is that simple. ow to create FUD? Simply make it seem like you are against the very thing you are for.

The fact is China has some of the cheapest electricity rate on Earth. Privatized mining isn't going away there any time soon.

[Mometaskers]

Well there would be an increased risk of bitcoin collapsing if that should happen. The question is, what would they gain from it, aside from taking down a yuan competitor? If they bought cheap bit coins, those could become even more useless when a news of a mine takeover gets out. I think it would be more likely for them to keep a thumb on the miners, like how they do to other private enterprises.

A government declares something illegal, takes over the "illegal" business.. only to continue running it.

Lacks principle. Big Hypocrisy and very immoral

Governments are not exactly known for strictly adhering to moral principles.

[illyiller]

So lets say that the Chinese government declares mining illegal & takes over the mines (likely to happen). Seeing that the vast majority of mining takes place in China, couldn't the government hypothetically reach over 51% of the bitcoin hashing power and basically centralize global bitcoin?
What cryptos, if any, are immune to this "51% attack" ? Is it even an issue? I'm not that well informed on the details of this subject so excuse my ignorance.

It's not clear that a majority of hash power is located inside China, although that's very possible. We only know that Chinese pools accounts for a majority. There are surely miners from around the world that point their hash power at Chinese pools; they can simply point it somewhere else now.

If mining were prohibited or nationalized, a lot of the mining hardware would be physically moved outside of China. There are already a lot of rumors floating around that miners are liquidating mining hardware as quickly as possible now. So, while the news would be shocking to the market, I don't think that the Chinese government would control 51% of hash power. But if they do nationalize mining operations, then it will set off a race for other governments to similarly back miners.