I just read through an article i found on reddit recently, and i must say, this looks extremely promising. I will not go off on a speculative rant where bitcoin WILL become the new global currency China has stated they want to pursue, but i definitely feel like we are going to see some growth, especially from China.
http://www.techinasia.com/whats-chinese-bitcoin-community/To my knowledge (which isn't too much), china is still pretty protectionist when it comes to their citizens money. I remember hearing there being several similar virtual cash -startups this century, which I think got shut down by the government.
This might explain the popularity with bitcoin - there are several examples from other countries, where people would have loved to make earning online, but the currency restrictions were too strict. Bitcoin had solved those problems brilliantly for them.
In any case, China is definitely the force that will move bitcoins to even bigger heights and I don't really see the momentum stopping just yet. The potential there is huge.
Here are some interesting statistics about bitcoin clients downloaded.
