China stacks more Au in 1 mth than what Oz holds in the City of London

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Emanance

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Saw this chart on ZH. Just thought it funny how our largest trading partner is stacking Gold like there is no tomorrow. The one thing more amazing than the fact the Chinese can manage to import more gold in one month than Australia has managed to accumulate in an unallocated account in London since the inception of Federation, Is the fact that 'official IMF records' still say China only holds 1054 tons the yellow heavy shiny stuff in reserve since 2009, and they imported 835 tons of it last year alone! What did they do with it all, export it as Pandas?

7081_gold_china_2012.jpg

Source: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-02-05/china-imports-record-amount-gold-december-price-drop
 
They are also very responsible in encouraging their citizens to purchase physical :)

They recently removed capital gains tax on gold coin profits to encourage more people to enter the gold market.
 
doomsday surprise said:
China is a huge gold producer as well. And most of that is kept in China. Who knows how much they have?
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I was reading some time ago that of the 700 plus gold mines in China, only a handful operate at the full capacity due to limits in modernization, so most of these mines operate traditional extraction methods and therefore only produce on average half a ton of gold each annually. The 30 or so mines that have undergone modernization (part of a national roll out of mine modernization.) have gone from these lows and are now producing between 3-8 tons each annually. http://www.qstheory.cn/zxdk/2012/201215/201207/t20120727_172665.htm
 
Take a look at the figures underneath that graph ? Am I right in thinking that they could be wrong ? China imports 834.5 tons in 2012 double the 431 tons in 2011 but it's total holdings are only 1054 tons ??? Just on the importation amounts alone and neglecting the domestic production these two amounts alone would be above the figure shown on the chart. Am I missing something ?

gold%20holdings%20jan%202013.jpg

Source:
 
Compare The Netherlands with over 600 tons to Australia's reported 80 tons. There are only 16 million in Holland. No wonder the Dutch are trying to get their 90% home. 2 chances ...? Wait in the line after Germany.
 
southerncross said:
Take a look at the figures underneath that graph ? Am I right in thinking that they could be wrong ? China imports 834.5 tons in 2012 double the 431 tons in 2011 but it's total holdings are only 1054 tons ??? Just on the importation amounts alone and neglecting the domestic production these two amounts alone would be above the figure shown on the chart. Am I missing something ?

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defa.../imageroot/2013/01/gold holdings jan 2013.jpg
Source:
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Not forgetting the 1054 ton figure is already over 4 years old!!!

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn 2009-04-24 15:12
China, owner of the world's biggest forex reserves, said Friday its gold reserves had risen to 1,054 tons by the end of 2008. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2009-04/24/content_7713951.htm
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Chinese 'official' reserves have increased as follows:

2001- 500t
2003- 600t (+100t or +50t per year 2002-2003)
2008- 1054t (+454t or +90.8t per year 2004-2008)

Can't wait to see how much they have accumulated since the end of 2008. That would be a nice day to be holding. Despite it being an IMF requirement to report these reserves annually China's not going to announce to the world it's on a program of gold accumulation and drive up the prices they have to pay. Suppose in the meantime it also gives stackers some breathing room to BTFDs :D.
 
Confucius says storing gold in America like woman having a baby, Great fun at first but hard time getting it out. :lol:
 
It's ironic that a communist nation such as China has fairer tax policies than Australia.

yennus said:
They are also very responsible in encouraging their citizens to purchase physical :)

They recently removed capital gains tax on gold coin profits to encourage more people to enter the gold market.
Click to expand...
 
southerncross said:
Take a look at the figures underneath that graph ? Am I right in thinking that they could be wrong ? China imports 834.5 tons in 2012 double the 431 tons in 2011 but it's total holdings are only 1054 tons ??? Just on the importation amounts alone and neglecting the domestic production these two amounts alone would be above the figure shown on the chart. Am I missing something ?
Click to expand...

ZH is neglecting to mention quite a lot of information. They're saying that gold imported into Hong Kong is the same thing as the Chinese government buying gold.

It isn't.

Hong Kong is both a special administrative region of China (with a completely different set of laws, regulations and traditions) and a global financial center. The Chinese government has been encouraging Chinese citizens to buy gold (themselves, personally) for years so a fair amount of those imports could well be to to supply the private market for investment bullion. Outsourcing the acquisition of gold to individuals is a smart move by the Chinese government but they don't have complete control over who has it and what they do with it. "China" might be buying gold but "China" isn't a single entity either.

A fair amount of it would also be used as raw material for manufactured jewellery, some of which would end up being exported but wouldn't be counted as "bullion" after the manufacturing process. Some of it is probably used in circuit board manufacturing, which China is doing quite a lot of, and the gold shipped off to the U.S. inside a new iPhone won't get recorded as "bullion" either. I've got no clue how much gold there is in an iPhone but if there is, say, 0.2g then Apples 47.8 million iPhone sales in the last quarter would have more than 9.5 tonnes of gold in them.

Other scenarios would include Chinese citizens living inside China who are deliberately buying gold which stays outside the mainland should they ever wish to leave China for somewhere else in the world. Then there are the global financial institutions which could have decided they want to move their gold holdings closer to China for convenient sale at a later date (but still hold onto it themselves for now).

But hey, the Chinese government is probably accumulating a fair bit but Hong Kong is a black box. Stuff goes in and nobody can say for certain what happens to it after that.
 
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