Could it be that 2,700 metric tons of gold — more than half of the world’s annual global production — is being hidden in Communist China?
The question arises in a new report from a Singapore-based newspaper and adds to mounting speculation that China has amassed a larger-than-reported stockpile of the metal that is the basis of monetary value.
The four-figure gap was discovered by economist Chen Long after he compared the total gold holdings in China — incorporating reported holdings of retail buyers, regional banks, and the People’s Bank of China — with the country’s import and production numbers.
He reckons that China’s official gold holdings last year reportedly only rose by 431 metric tons. The number for gold imports and production, however, came out to 1775 metric tons. Given that China exports a negligible amount of gold, the estimates leave 1,300 metric tons unaccounted for.
Adding that figure to the number of “missing” metric tons of gold Mr. Long estimated for 2022 — around 1,400 — the number swells up to 2,700 metric tons over the two-year period. The value of the dollar has collapsed to less than a 2,400th of an ounce of gold.
It is common to see gaps in the numbers, Mr. Long notes, but they usually only amount to a few hundred metric tons at most. “Such a huge gap is rare.”
Mr. Long offers various explanations for the discrepancy. The first being that China’s central bank has simply underreported the amount of gold it actually bought.
If it is indeed the case that all of the “missing” gold from the past two years can be attributed to the People’s Bank of China, it would mean that the bank has doubled its stated gold reserves to nearly 5,000 metric tons.
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