Why buy gold? China and India are the world's biggest buyers of the precious metal, but are attitudes to gold different across the world?

As an asset, gold is entirely speculative. It provides no income or dividends, and has few industrial or medical applications. Investors buy it only in the confidence that humans’ peculiar and enduring fascination with the lustrous metal will ensure its value through the decades and centuries to come.

It seems that distrust in a government, and the currency it controls, is the primary motivation for buying gold, however you choose to hold it.

Why buy gold? China and India are the world's biggest buyers of the precious metal, but are attitudes to gold different across the world?