http://english.pravda.ru/business/finance/15-05-2015/130611-china_gold_dollar-0/ Don't know how valid this is but you have to ask yourself what if it is true...?
Utter BS I'm afraid but fairly typical of how Pravda operates. A fairy tale story gets reamed out in some foreign blog and then Pravda cites it following which a lot of idiot bot posters rewrite it for minimum wage and repost it all over the internet. Should show up on zero hedge and conspiracytard sites run by Moscow soon and then spread out to KWN and SD. http://forums.silverstackers.com/message-791887.html#p791887 "Inflates Chinas national gold reserve massively to 16000 tons that it may appear double that of the United States. This is despite the 2009 Chinese government announcement of the figure of 1054 tons in 2009. However this comparison is made between US treasury held gold and to quote the author 'the gold content within Chinas borders'. This is an utterly spurious comparison. Even if one wished to make such a comparison it would be between all gold in US borders and all gold in Chinese borders. Obviously the quantity of gold in the USA including privately owned etc. is vastly greater than 8000 tons even by just including private holdings." What Pravda running this story tells me is this: Moscow would like the price of gold to go up. They bought in April. I wonder if they will keep buying now or are they done? After all they currently have to buy their own miners gold to prop them up......... You can expect this to echo around the gold pumper sites linked to some utter nonsense about the BRICS launching a gold backed currency and the collapse of the west. Still the Moscow PR train was very successful pumping silver in the past so maybe they will get suckers to buy based on this shite. There are good reasons to hold gold for some people. Stuff like this is not that reason. IF you are quick you can just see where they have done their thing.... [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru4glg0RJxA[/youtube]
Ties in nicely with recent Forbes and Bloomberg articles saying that China are about to announce how much gold they have. They definitely don't have 30,000t. But maybe they do.
And they could have a secret base on the moon and be fighting a secret war against aliens in spaceships with NWO painted on them they definitely don't. But Maybe they do. But they probably don't......6000 tons would be more than enough to meet reserve goals at most. 30,000 tons is just plain silly. As is 16000. At that point I'd say the odds of a secret war with aliens is far higher and equally bogus. Conspiracy theories abound about China's gold purchases http://www.scmp.com/business/article/1425591/conspiracy-theories-abound-about-chinas-gold-purchases .................... "China's huge appetite for gold has inspired dozens of conspiracy theories. They are all nonsense." ................... "Given the sheer size of China's gold imports since then, as well as the growth of its mine production, analysts variously estimate that the central bank's gold reserves now stand anywhere between 2,700 tonnes and 5,000 tonnes. Alas, even 5,000 tonnes would be nothing like enough to launch a convincing monetary system. Fully backing China's monetary base - the yuan in issue plus Chinese banks' reserves held by the PBOC - would require 110,000 tonnes of gold, or around two-thirds of all the metal that has ever been mined. And in all probability the 5,000 tonne figure is a gross overestimate of China's official reserves, given that China's imports through Hong Kong went overwhelmingly to satisfy consumer demand for jewellery and private investors' appetite for bullion. The lower figure of 2,700 tonnes of official holdings is surely closer to the truth. At current prices, that means Beijing's official gold reserves would be worth around US$110 billion, which is less than 3 per cent of China's overall foreign exchange reserves. That's roughly the same proportion of its foreign reserves that the central bank held in gold 10 years ago. So, far from plotting to corner gold markets and take over the world's monetary system, it looks as if China may be doing nothing more than maintaining a constant allocation to the stuff. " [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzVRZPgThZ8[/youtube] But far more interesting is why Pravda ran this junk story.....and just watch it spread....all based on 'unconfirmed sources'.
Pravda is not to be taken very seriously but I wouldn't say that it's representative of what the Russian government wants you to think either (that's RT's job). The workers daily is really nothing like it's former self and is only notable because the it carries historical name recognition. I don't think there are many other Russian newspapers with a circulation of 125k that could make claims that get picked up like that, they're smaller than Adelaide's Advertiser. FWIW I think the Chinese have an ace up their sleeves with their gold reserves but it isn't 30,000 tones, it just isn't. I do give some credence to reports of stealth buying for official reserves but you couldn't stealth 30k ton even if it was the states highest priority.
That is the funny thing about Pravda. It is often used as a requote link for this kind of stuff since it is all grown up and stopped it's post communist phase of running flying saucer stories. You will find this story all over the internet even though it is pure noise but the entire notion of an expansionary economy like China adopting a deflationary hard currency was utter shite to begin with - yet it is plastered all over the internet. I do not believe that RT and Zerohedge were uncoordinated in pumping silver previously though in concert with other semi-directly run conspiracytard agitprot sites. Maybe we will get the truth on that in a decade or two.
Jim Rickards says at minimum 7,500 tons and that's since he started counting. Considering how the PRC pillaged the nation and Tibet for 50 years I wouldn't be at all surprised at 30,000 tons, but I would be very surprised if the Chinese admitted they had more than 7,500 tons.
Well it it not as insanely daft at 30,000 tons (a million billion tons why not?!) or indeed 16,000 but it is a bit on the high side by about 1000 at least. Jim Rickards would have a tendency to speculate to the high side after all(I note he has limited himself to at least something that can pass la la land but is still a bit yellow brick road) ...he is somewhat of the pumper camp. I think the key reason that this tends to get spun and pumped is the myth that China or the BRICS are about to use vast so far undisclosed gold stocks to back a hard currency or sdr drawing right in some sort of dramatic currency move. This is nonsense. 2-3% of reserves is just good management on their part. I don't think such fables help PM markets with time and truth they look nutty and undermine the good reasons to own gold and contribute to the nutjob image of PM investors that the likes of CNBC promote to encourage punters to throw 100% of their wealth at a fund manager who will stick it on the dow. The British empire had already sucked all the gold from China by the 1920s so they started well behind as the figures show for their reserves in 2003. Speaking of Tibet and gold.... http://www.rfa.org/english/news/tibet/protest-03222014220107.html Here is an interesting one on what happened to Tibets gold reserve in 1959 http://www.tibetanpoliticalreview.org/articles/afactualaccountofthetibetangovernmentsgoldandsilver Although the real picture is not clear.... Chinese propaganda at the time was that the Dalai Lama fled because the population had got news he had whisked away the gold reserve. Looks more like he had a mule train with a chunk but not the lot. There is so much Chinese prop on the matter it is difficult to get the plain facts.
They'd definitely have run through various scenarios and be playing some cards close to their chest, but ultimately the Chinese ruling party will do what's good for the Chinese ruling party and this comes down to money and power. No point upsetting the status quo while they are able to keep their massive population relatively controlled with internal measures. But should a time come when the Chinese people are on the cusp of rising up against the authoritarian state, then we shall see what plans have been laid to refocus popular attention. It may simply come down to a war in the South China Sea (for which China is obviously preparing, even if nothing eventuates) with China's neighbors promoted as the enemy to draw the wrath of the citizens. If China as a nation were to become, for a period, a global pariah, then those gold reserves may be very useful until the old geopolitical order is restored. But this is all speculation, just as the Chinese ruling elites and the PLA generals would be speculating and drawing up contingency plans for various events. And don't think for a moment that the U.S. doesn't have any aces up their sleeve.
I think they will simply go full blown iron curtain if there is any hint of domestic unrest and use a territorial dispute to channel any domestic anger into externalised nationalist wrath. As of now there is zero capability to project force. They have one aging second hand Russian carrier that they are in the baby steps of learning how to get planes off. Therefore their oligarchy will keep any conflict luke warm to allow some venting on flag waving and actually turn inward for enemies or challenges to their power.... Hard currency is not a good thing for a rapidly growing economy as it constrains money supply and stunts growth.
