According to the investment bank Goldman Sachs estimates, China acquired approximately 48 tonnes of gold through the London over-the-counter market in May, its largest monthly purchase in more than a year.
A brief note on the OTC market
The over-the-counter market is the decentralised wholesale market in which major banks, refiners, mints, international wholesalers, bullion dealers and other professional market participants trade directly with one another, rather than through a formal futures exchange.
In gold, silver and platinum, OTC trading is a critically important part of the global market and, in many cases, represents substantially greater physical and wholesale trading activity than is visible through public futures exchanges alone.
China’s estimated 48-tonne purchase in May was approximately 4.8 times larger than the 10 tonnes officially reported by the People’s Bank of China for the same month.
The official data therefore appears to capture only a fraction of the true scale of Chinese accumulation.
China’s central bank then officially added a further 15 tonnes in June, its largest monthly increase in at least two and a half years and its 20th consecutive month of reported reserve growth.
On the official figures alone, China has added approximately 40 tonnes of gold so far in 2026.
However, if we apply a more conservative multiple of four times the officially reported figure, China’s true year-to-date accumulation could already be closer to 160 tonnes.
The conclusion is increasingly difficult to ignore:
China’s real gold purchases may be running at nearly five times the level disclosed in the official data – according to Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs’ analysis reinforces what many in the physical market have suspected / realised for many years now but frowned upon by Western press, China’s actual gold accumulation is substantially greater than the published central-bank figures suggest.
The bank says this accelerating buying, concentrated heavily in China, should act as a price floor even as gold faces near term pressure from hawkish Federal Reserve pricing.
David comment: Hawkish FED is nonsense, hard fact …approximately 32% of all U.S. government debt must be rolled over in the next 12 months. That is approximately $12 to 15 TRILLION requiring new buyers at today’s elevated interest rates, they desperately need lower rates and not higher.
See chart below….
Goldman Sachs continues to view elevated central-bank gold accumulation as a multi-year structural trend, driven primarily by the ongoing diversification of sovereign reserves away from US-dollar assets.
This remains a central pillar of the bank’s US$4,900 per troy ounce gold price forecast for the end of 2026.
Importantly, private-sector portfolio allocations to gold remain comparatively low. Goldman therefore believes there is substantial scope for demand to broaden beyond central banks and into private wealth, institutional portfolios and global investment funds, particularly if geopolitical tensions continue to intensify.
In that environment, the medium-term balance of risk for gold prices remains firmly skewed to the upside.
China’s accumulation must also be viewed in the context of its much longer-term strategy.
Since 2008, China has imported approximately 36,000 tonnes of non-monetary gold, in addition to a further 1,745.45 tonnes of monetary gold allocated to official central-bank reserves.
The scale of these purchases makes one point very clear:
China’s accumulation of gold is not a short-term trade. It is a long-term strategic policy.
My Update on The Enormous Opportunity in Silver coming next in Part 7………….