I've kind of seen this coming since WeChat Wallet was introduced. Around Beijing, the CCP has been pushing vendors to not only accept payments by WeChat but in many cases to ONLY accept them by WeChat. It's only logical that the next step from a digital medium of exchange would be a digital currency. Given that China is running out of ways to hide the economic cliff they're teetering on the edge of, a Hail Mary wager on the future of digital currency would be a foreseeable move. It also explains why China has been so harsh on BitCoin: they didn't want any competition in place. Further, their fascination with Ether might hint that their currency will be Etherium-based, in which case Ether's price is going to go into orbit.
The thing that's scary is that China will maintain rock-solid control over the wallets (when does the CCP allow anything they don't control?). This, coupled with the Sesame Point system, begins to show a pattern of "we didn't like your WeChat post/message, so your account has been locked," meaning you can't buy or sell anything if the CCP doesn't like your correspondence.