China's quietly gobbled 300 tons of gold for state reserves, expert speculates - Wealth Managers

"There's some form of official purchases that have not yet been reflected" in published statistics

"If you're China, the last thing you want to do is be transparent about your gold purchases, because it will drive the price up," "Currency Wars" author Jim Rickards told The Daily Reckoning earlier this year. But at some point in 2014, Rickards expects China will announce that its gold reserves have grown to 5,000 tonnes.

"That should be an earthquake because even the gold deniers, the gold doubters, are going to have to sit up and take notice," Rickards said. "Either the Chinese are dopes, which they're not, or people will start to get gold, which I think they will."

Now Philip Klapwijk of Precious Metals Insights Ltd. is saying China may have bought 300 metric tons of gold in the first half of this year to diversify its foreign-exchange reserves, the world's largest.

"The probability is that there's some form of official purchases that have not yet been reflected in the monetary gold reserves," Klapwijk said, referring to bullion declared to theInternational Monetary Fund. "Undoubtedly, that's provided support for prices, which could have been weaker.

"Purchases since end-2008 could be quite substantial, especially in calendar 2013 to date," said Klapwijk, who used for work for the metals consultancy Thomson Reuters GFMS. "It remains to be seen if China will decide at some point to re-position some or all of this bullion in the monetary reserves and publish a new figure for its official gold holdings."  

More information can be found online at http://www.goldbullionadvisors.com