China’s Gold Imports Still at Unprecedented Highs!

• How do you stabilize a currency in the face of hyper-inflation? You back it with a hard asset like gold ! Both Russia and China are preparing for this eventuality! Countries that do not have physical gold will suffer the destruction of their national currencies via hyper-inflation!
  –
• China’s gold imports still at unprecedented highs! 
  by Lawrence Williams, http://www.mineweb.com/ , 08 Jul 2013 
  Figures for net Chinese gold imports through Hong Kong in May have now been released, and, while they did not quite come up to the record level seen in March at 136 tonnes, at 108.8 tonnes they were still the second highest total on record, and comfortably in advance of April’s 80 tonnes.
  –
  In April, it is thought that the level of net imports could have been far higher but traders were taken by surprise following the exceedingly high March import figures which had used up their quotas and a subsequent rundown of stocks that month which had not been fully replaced by the time of the big April 12 gold price fall which had appeared to stimulate huge physical demand.
  –
  In retrospect, the scenes of crowds stampeding the dealers to try and secure gold that month may have been exacerbated by what is now known to be a shortage of stock which forced price premiums to almost unprecedented levels.
  –
  The initial very steep price fall on April 12 hugely stimulated demand throughout the East in particular, although there were also reports of high levels of physical demand elsewhere too.
  –
  Gold’s price performance since then falling even further has perhaps diminished the huge demand surge.  In addition, India’s draconian measures to try and cut gold imports on the face of things seem to be being successful in keeping volumes down – at least official volumes are seen to be sharply lower, although smuggling, which won’t find its way into the official statistics may mitigate this fall-off a little in reality.
  –
  There is also the feeling, if not perhaps the evidence yet, that even Chinese demand is weakening a little.  We still see occasional reports of gold traders being mobbed and of high premiums for physical gold, although, again, these seem to be falling off, perhaps due to an increasing feeling that lower prices are here to stay – at least for a little while – reducing the buying urgency from the feeling that prices could have bottomed out.  Even so, as the May figures show, demand continues to run high.
  –
  Thus China will certainly become the world’s No. 1 gold consumer this year – if indeed it was not already.  (China is not forthcoming with its overall consumption statistics).  So far net imports through Hong Kong for the first five months of the year have totalled over 413 tonnes – double those of a year earlier when China imported just over 830 tonnes in the full year
  –
  read more!

end