China, it seems, wants to make the rules in the international monetary system, which is why it has been acquiring vast amounts of gold through both private and official channels.

Because of the obscure nature of the Chinese gold market and the reluctance of Chinese officials to show their hand, nobody has been able to accurately calculate how much gold the Chinese have acquired since 2000, when they began amassing it.

Enter Koos Jansen, an analyst with Singapore bullion dealer BullionStar. He has studied the Chinese gold market for years and recently came up with an estimate of total Chinese gold holdings: 19,500 metric tons, or 21,495 U.S. tons, at the end of January 2017.

China will increase its annual gold output to 500 tonnes by 2020 from around 450 tonnes currently, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

China has been the world's biggest gold producer for 10 years and the largest gold consumer for four years.

The country's gold output rose 0.76 percent year on year to 453.5 tonnes in 2016, with consumption hitting 975.4 tonnes.

In total, since 2011, China has imported more than 5,000 tonnes. That’s more than is in the vaults of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and more even than Germany’s holdings (around 3,400 tonnes). Another three years at a similar rate, and China will have imported more gold than there is at Fort Knox.

The cumulative impact is astonishing. Add China’s domestic production into the equation, as well as the recycling of scrap, and it seems that since 2009, more than 12,000 ounces of gold have either been produced in, or imported to, China.

It’s pretty easy to start drawing the conclusion that China is planning to return the world to some kind of international gold standard and thereby undermine US imperial and economic might by destabilising the dollar.

WeChat began testing a new lucky money feature during the recent Chinese New Year holiday that enables transfers of gold bullion among users with the same mechanics for the existing cash hongbao (lucky money or red envelopes in Chinese).

With the gold hongbao (not official translation), like the cash hongbao, a sender can either send packets to certain persons or let the system randomly divide a certain amount into certain parts and send it to a chat group for group members to try their luck.

Chinese investors withdrew over 63.3 million ounces of gold from their primary gold exchange in 2016, the fourth highest on record.

To put that in perspective, it’s 64 times more than all of the gold Eagles sold by the US Mint last year.

Another way to look at it is this: check out how much of total global gold production those withdrawals represent.

Add a weakening yuan and capital outflows from China to the global forces helping boost demand for gold.

In the week through Monday, China attracted $52 million, the biggest inflow into commodity-linked exchange-traded funds of all countries tracked by Bloomberg. Huaan Yifu Gold ETF, China’s largest ETF backed by raw materials, is getting all the attention, attracting almost $72 million last week, more than enough to offset outflows from its peers.

At the end of 2015 there were over 8.6 million individual accounts, over 10,000 institutional accounts and the total gold trading volume for the year reached 17,000 tonnes. The exchange was ranked as one of the largest and we firmly grasped an important opportunity for the internationalization of the RMB with the profound changes happening in the gold market. At the same time, we want to build a harmonious ecological gold market that sets a new path for the global gold market and achieve the status of being a global gold power from a large gold holding nation.

While all eyes were on India (as rumors swirled of an imminent gold import ban), The FT reports that China curbed gold imports in the wake of government attempts to clamp down on capital leaving the country, according to traders and bankers.

The limits on imports bite as the weakening renminbi raises Chinese investors’ interest in gold. Lower gold prices have also triggered more buying.

The combination of tighter quotas and an uptick in demand caused the premium for gold in China over the international gold price to jump as high as $46 in the past few weeks, according to data from Wind Information. Normal levels are about $2 to $4.

In an effort to ease that premium, Chinese banks have been allowed to import gold under their quotas using the offshore renminbi, one banker said. Although still high, the premium for gold on the Shanghai Gold Exchange has since fallen to $26, according to Wind data.

Withdrawals from the vaults of the Shanghai Gold Exchange, which can be used as a proxy for Chinese wholesale gold demand, reached 1,406 tonnes in the first three quarters of 2016. Supply that went through the central bourse consisted of at least 905 tonnes imported gold, roughly 335 tonnes of domestic mine output, and 166 tonnes in scrap supply and other flows recycled through the exchange.