They've banned the banks from using it. They've banned journalists from reporting it. They pour scorn on Bitcoin users (maybe they've got that partially right
). The line you take is beginning to sound pedantic.
OMG T. Stuart, has the bitcoin bull now turned permabear?
Still, the bulk of mining hardware is manufactured in China, and if their gov were against Bitcoin they'd move against that. Or rule something akin to "Bitcoin could have a destabilizing influence on the economy and therefore is prohibited" - which they also didn't.
...yet. Right now, the bitcoin economy market cap is just too small for them to care. When bitcoin adoption and thus the price grows orders of magnitude from here (and it will eventually), don't put it past the Chinese gov't to do something that grave and stupid. Just like Russia, they will pull out all the stops they need to pull in order to try and regain control. They'll probably start seriously caring with the market cap hits ~$50B USD.
The only reason they haven't completely banned bitcoin exchanges in their country is
a) they want to keep the final trump card in their back pocket, in order to keep the FUD going as long as possible (since it seems to be working for now), and
b) they don't want to look like draconian N. Korea to their people, and
c) because they know bitcoin can't be extinguished because it's decentralized and global. So they'd look pretty stupid going to that extreme. It would just push it into a black market, and continued growth would them make them lose face to their people. But they still have plenty of other means of FUD at their disposal.
But ultimately it is a losing game for them, because bitcoin is global. No one country can control it, not its adoption/growth, it's price, nothing. It would be like the Chinese government trying to ban Linux usage on a global level, or Tor, or BitTorrent, or the entire internet globally. Just not possible. The more they try, the more stupid they look.
EDIT: BTW, China exchange volume makes up only 7% of the world's bitcoin exchange volume. ONLY 7%!!!
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/volumepie/
