How Much Gold Is China Really Importing?

http://investmentresearchdynamics.com/china-may-be-importing-a-lot-more-gold-than-is-reported/

Here’s an interesting little factoid:   In 2013 the U.S. mined a total of 210 tonnes of gold.  YTD thru March 2014, the U.S. has exported 158 tonnes of gold.  In that is likely that gold production was at best flat to 2013 in Q1 (and likely down), where is all this gold coming from that the U.S. is selling and shipping to the rest of the world, primarily China?

There has been a lot of gold market media coverage this year focused in on China’s demand for gold.  The consensus misconception is that China YTD has bought less gold this year than last.   As is commonly and tragically the case, most of the mainstream – and even precious metals-dedicated – news reports are using bad data sources for their reports.   Unfortunately, China has made it intentionally impossible to figure out with any degree of reliability just how much gold the country as a whole is accumulating.

I wrote an article for Seeking Alpha discussing this issue:

[There are] several reasons why generally published and accepted western reports of China’s gold import activity are unreliable and that China’s true level of gold demand is significantly higher than is commonly accepted or known outside of China.

You can read the full article here:   China’s Gold Demand

Anectodally, the SRSrocco Report (SRSroccoreport.com) wrote a nice piece showing that nearly 50% of U.S. gold exports went to Honk Kong (click on chart to enlarge, edits are mine):