One country you should look at when examining gold, its health and strength is China. I was reading an article over on commodityonline.com which had some very interesting statistics on China’s reserves of gold. According to the resource China now has over 1,000 tons of gold, up from less than 400 tons in early 2000.

That’s right, in less than 10 years, China has tripled it’s gold reserves:

[After growing its reserves to 400 tons in]n 2001, then to 600 tons in 2003. The country has added another 454 tons to the gold reserve through gold purification and domestic trade.

A total of over 1000 tons of gold!

The news of China’s huge reserves, and their growing dominance in the world gold market has many excited as China may be looking to purchase large quantities of gold bullion. Currently, China has the 5th largest reserves of Gold in the world, only topped by the United States, France, Germany, and Italy.

The purchases of Gold that have grown China’s reserves by such a large amount have been the result of recurring purchases made over the last 6 years through China’s SAFE (State Administration of Foreign Exchange).