Hahaha this isn't breaking news. This was announced a few days ago. They won't recognize it as a currency but you are allowed to be traded in the grey, which means at your own risk and therefore allowing bitcoin to be implemented the way it's creators intended... For now lol
Where was it published a few days ago? The chinese and western sites being referenced here and on reddit all say 5th December.
Yes this is the official announcement but all the details publicized were reported on in the news since nov 20 to dec 3 and now today the 5th.
Gordon G. Chang, Contributor
I write primarily on China, Asia, and nuclear proliferation.
OP/ED | 11/24/2013 @ 6:42PM |29,019 views
A China Triangle: Bitcoin, Baidu And Beijing
And if there were any doubts that the central government favored Bitcoin, Yi Gang on Wednesday erased them.
The deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, the central bank, said although Beijing would not recognize Bitcoin as a medium of exchange soon, people were free to participate in the Bitcoin market.
Yi’s words were significant because Chinese law actually forbids acquiring and using Bitcoins. The Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Culture in 2009 jointly issued rules that outlawed the use of virtual currency in the real economy, specifically the exchange of such currency for goods and services, or the exchange of it for renminbi. The ban was imposed in response to the widespread acceptance of QQ, the virtual currency of Tencent, the Chinese social media giant. QQ, incredibly, had grown to about 13% of the Chinese cash economy. People traded QQ in public areas, and it was accepted in shops. Tencent itself brought QQ back under control “overnight” because Beijing ordered it to do so. The Bitcoin algorithm was released online just months after Tencent was forced to rein in its virtual currency.