What's behind China's gold-buying spree? – DW – 04/05/2024
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For more than a year, China's central bank has been buying up large amounts of gold. The move, along with the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, have helped spike the price of the precious metal to new highs.

For more than a year, China’s central bank has been buying up large amounts of gold. The move, along with the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, have helped spike the price of the precious metal to new highs.

The price of gold broke the $2,300 (€2,212) level for the first time this week as geopolitical issues, expectations of US interest rate cuts and China’s accumulation of the precious metal spurred interest from speculators.

Gold is seen by investors as a safe haven in times of turmoil and a hedge against currency devaluation, so the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine have helped the recent price rise, along with the post-COVID inflation spike.

The move by China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBC), has been mirrored by other mostly emerging market central banks, who are all keen to up their gold holdings.

DW takes a look at why Beijing has gone on a gold-buying spree.

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      8 months ago

      A part of myself I am not proud of, the part that slows down by car accidents rubbernecking hoping to see blood, kinda wants to see them implement 2025.

      Can you imagine the delicious chaos of it? The day the stock market collapses and people whose only qualifications are fifteen years experience doing conservative talk radio are trying to figure out how to economy. Issuing random statements about how they woke forces are causing the currency collapse.

      The entire world is run by unimaginative experts. Keeping systems going based only on what has worked before. Which is fine. You didn’t invent shoes, you wear them because everyone else was. The shoemaking company that made them didn’t invent them either. They just run the factories.

      They want to change that. They want an ideological driven system instead of an expert system. And every single time without exception in human history this was tried. Every time when ideological purity determined rank instead of rank climbing semi-meritocracy things went to hell. This time would be even worse because our society is a lot more complicated than say 1919 Russia.