I'm not sure why the title of the article focuses on mining. China had already banned mining. This was very visible as a drop in the hash rate over the summer[1].
What has been announced now (by the Chinese central bank and a bunch of regulators) is that all crypto related transactions will be banned.
There's a lot of vague language in these types of threads. What does "banned" mean? Does that mean illegal and punishable by death? Or does that mean, connections to identified crypto computing resources will be blocked by the great firewall?
From my understanding of the announcements, Chinese companies will be banned from performing any cryptocurrency related services, transactions or exchanges, including smart contract platforms like Ethereum. No firm mention of private individuals, or what particular penalties companies would face.
But either way, it greatly limits the value of cryptocurrencies (and related concepts) in China.
What it means is that crypto is shut down from anything that involves bookkeeping. Banks, financial transactions, money transfers, buying stuff from kiosk, ... No legal commerce or finance.
Crypto is now purely black market currency in China.
Apart from the missing actual news (it's now also trading), what's not to understand? Banned by a government means illegal. Trading cryptocurrencies is now illegal there. Who cares how they enforce it? They will enforce it.
What has been announced now (by the Chinese central bank and a bunch of regulators) is that all crypto related transactions will be banned.
[1] http://bitcoin.sipa.be/