Significantly, although outside the scope of this study, in October 2012 Shenzhen
Special Economic Zone passed local legislation to restrict emissions of GHGs, the first such legislation in China.
However, with every
passing month that the Chinese government simply sits around and does nothing, even while the central bank of Thailand, a longtime political ally of China, recommends that Bitcoin be banned, that hypothesis gets slightly less likely, and an alternative possibility comes into play: Bitcoin might be becoming China's newest
special economic zone.