RE: shorts The short position on GCU is relatively small in comparison to other gold companies so I do not see shorters attempting to knock this one down. May 7 would have been a good day for shorters to push the stock down but it held up very well. I did see larger sell orders coming up at the end of that day and this may have helped with the quick push down to under 1.50. Shorting does not appear out of the ordinary on GCU as compared to the mining equities.
I think what you are seeing on the gold charts is the fact that on a day to day basis the Yuan, CNY does not stray too far from the USD. The yuan is pegged on a basket of currencies including the USD and it's spread is controlled within a tight band. So when you look at the chart of the two on relative gold prices, there is a high correlation in the movements over time, however that is not the case when you only compare the Yuan to the USD. The USD fell against the Yuan in the last half on 2011 but has remained steady since the beginning of 2012.