Huge CHANGE! CHINA TAKES OVER London Gold Price THIS MONTH!

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This month the physical gold market will undergo radical change when the four London fixing banks hand over the twice-daily fix to the International Commodity Exchange’s trading platform on 20th March.…

This will transfer price control away from the bullion banks allowing direct access to the fixing process for all direct participants and sponsored clients.

From this flow two important consequences. Firstly, the London market is changing from an unregulated to a partially regulated market, reducing room for price manipulation. And secondly, the major Chinese state-owned banks, assuming they register as direct participants, have the opportunity to dominate the London physical market without having to deal through one of the current fixing banks. 

No announcement has been made yet as to who the direct participants will be, but it is a racing certainty China will be represented.

 

Implications of becoming a regulated market

Under the current regime a buyer or seller on the fix has to deal through one of the four fixing bullion banks. The information gained by them from seeing this business is crucial, giving them a quasi-monopolistic trading advantage over all the other dealers. Instead, buyers and sellers will be anonymous during the auction process.

The new platform should, therefore, ensure equal opportunity, eliminating the advantage enjoyed by the fixing banks. Crucially, it will change market domination from the privileged fixing members in favour of the deepest pockets. These are almost certain to be China’s through the state-owned banks which already control the largest physical market in Asia, the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE).

China’s gold strategy

…China has deliberately developed her gold production regardless of cost so that she is now the largest producer by far in the world today. State-owned refineries process this gold along with doré imported from elsewhere. None of this gold leaves China.

The regulations quoted above formalise the State’s monopoly over all gold and silver which is exercised through the People’s Bank, and they allow the free importation of gold and silver but keep exports under very tight control. 

On the basis of these regulations and as subsequently amended the People’s Bank established the SGE, which remains under its total control. The intent behind the regulations is not to establish or permit the free trade of gold and silver, but to control these commodities in the interest of the state.

This being the case, the growth of Chinese gold imports recorded as deliveries to the public since 2002 is only the most recent evidence of a deliberate act of policy embarked upon thirty-two years ago. China had been accumulating gold for nineteen years before she allowed her own nationals to buy any when private ownership was finally permitted… The two largest buyers for all this gold for much of the time were the Middle East and China…

Put in another context the cost of China’s 25,000 tonnes of gold equates to roughly 10% of her exports over the period, and the eighties and early nineties in particular, also saw huge capital inflows when multinational corporations were building factories in China….

With such a large commitment to this market, we must now anticipate the next stage for China’s gold policy, which is why the changes in London may be important.

China now has the opportunity to take a dominant role in London, without having to direct its order flows through the fixing banks. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that from 20th March, China will be able to control the global physical gold market, which will permit her to manage the price. She has the deepest pockets, backed by the largest single stockpile.

China’s motives

China’s motives for taking control of the gold bullion market have almost certainly evolved. The regulations of 1983 make sense as part of a forward-looking plan to ensure that some of the benefits of industrialisation would be accumulated as a counterparty risk free national asset…However, as time passed the world has changed both economically and politically.

2002 was a significant year for China, when geopolitical considerations entered the picture. Not only did the People’s Bank establish the SGE to facilitate deliveries to private investors, but this was the year the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) formally adopted its charter. 

This merger of security and economic interests with Russia has bound Russia and China together with a number of resource-rich Asian states into an economic bloc. When India, Iran, Mongolia, Afghanistan and Pakistan join (as they are committed to do), the SCO will cover more than half the world’s population. And inevitably the SCO’s members are looking for an alternative trade settlement system to using the US dollar.