Also in some places you can probably [illegally] bypass the electric meter and leech someone else's electric supply - with bitcoin you can cash that electric in as money. Having seen images of the ratsnests of cables that festoon the pylons in some areas of China I can imagine it might be relatively easy to hookup a couple of jumpers and get some "free" bitcoins.
China may be a developing country, but it's not a messy place where people steal electricity like in much poorer south east asian countries.
Electricity is very reasonably priced (especially in rather rural areas where the factory is based) and there are tons of people with money in China that are always looking for potential high yield investments - sometimes with cash that cannot be invested in ventures that can be traced back to them due to it's dubious origins.
I was thinking this sort of thing,http://blogs.ft.com/photo-diary/files/2014/09/electric.jpg - but thinking about it China shouldn't have the issues with multiple utility companies hanging their wiring everywhere, perhaps I mis-remembered and it was another country.
>not a messy place where people steal electricity //
FWIW I wasn't suggesting that such a place be messy, the cause of this sort of cabling [dis]arrangement isn't related to hygiene; nor that Chinese are more prone to steal electricity just that complicated webs of cabling (as in that Kathmandu photo) could make it difficult to tell easily that someone had put in an extra line.
