China moves to Stage 2 of its great gold grab
By GCRU Gold News on Wednesday, June 24 2015, 23:24 - Permalink
That China is buying and hoarding gold seems beyond doubt. Even the Bloomberg news service recently assumed the Chinese central bank has 3,150 tonnes. That’s roughly triple what Beijing admits to: it has never updated its 2009 announcement that it had 1,054 tonnes.
But there is another strand to this story: China not only wants to acquire the largest gold reserve in the world, it also seeks to control the mines that produce the metal, so ensuring future supply. Just as Beijing has maintained dominance in rare earths, antimony, tungsten, molybdenum and other key metals, so it wants to dominate gold. But there is a difference: with all those other metals, China has substantial resources within its borders, but that is not the case with gold. So it has to achieve dominance by acquiring mines overseas.