Well, all fears about FFXIV being a success enough to maintain just went out the window.

Tapping China for their playerbase is a good thing for the game's future. It insures that the game will get enough of a following to maintain it's longevity as China is a HUGE MMO gaming market. Even garnering a fraction of the active player base means that FFXIV will have a huge subscription base. In fact, the total numbers now stand a chance of beating FFXI's current base purely on Chinese subscriptions alone.

I cannot stress this enough, this was a wise move on SE's part.

Now, that said, China itself is a pretty isolated part of the world for many reasons, and there is indeed the concern of rampant RMT and cross-culture shock in the game. People who make calls of Xenophibia seem to forget that the Early Days of FFXI were worse than FFXIV is now due to several factors. Hopefully the more open group content will help resolve that problem, and may even enable some integration from our fellow Chineese players, if it is chose to do so.

Personally, what I see is a "Any way you want." Approach coming from SE here soon. I think, they are going to release both Region Locked and Region Free servers for 2.0. As it provides the best play options for everyone. Though I the current servers will remain Region Free, so yes, keeping your character in your current server likely will garner meeting some new Chinese members later on down the line. I'm not terribly concerned about that.

My fears about this game reaching a stable enough population to maintain now has been eased with this news, however. Yoshida did find a way to manage to keep his full crew on board after all, and by doing what even FFXI feared to touch.