The latest weekly gold withdrawal figures from the Shanghai Gold Exchange suggest that Chinese demand is going to get far closer to last year’s annual figure than most mainstream news media would have you believe. (SGE withdrawals are the best available proxy for actual Chinese demand). The latest figure for the week ending December 19th was a large 60.67 tonnes bringing the year to date figure to 2,015.75 tonnes, only 165 tonnes short of last year’s 2,181 tonne record. With 1 ½ weeks of SGE withdrawal figures still to go until the year end, if withdrawals continue at the current rate it will bring this year’s total to around 2,100 tonnes – only around 4% off last year’s record figure.