Not on it self, but it might change the way people think about how a state shoud be run.
Just imagine what would happen if the horde and the alliance would be run like a republic in the same way Athene was run in ancient greek.

Every Chinees player would learn something about democracy and western thinking. That on it self isn't too much of a problem, but what if besides WoW also other games, movies and television series would be informing citizens about the "corrupting" ways of the western world.

The Chinees government has to keep all those sources of information about democracy and free thinking in-check or their citizens might rise up against them.

@Djbrill:

You say it as if the chinese didn't know they are on a dictatorship.

Wait, the didn't know? :O

I imagine this is more about power and garnering a bigger budget than it is about jitters over potential civil disrest! They see the boon that is becoming online gaming and it's only going to grow more on an explosive scale.

People can debate over the start of this boon but Blizzard are the ones that gave a glimpse of the sheer scale and money involved in it. I play WoW, Aion, CS and WC3 online and I can only imagine what is yet to come (SC2 will no doubt be on my list next year also), so it's sort of understandable that clued up politicians are swinging their respective balls to get a piece of the pie.