RE: RE: hard to believeAnd along this line from jsmineset:
"By Zhou Xin and Alan Wheatley BEIJING, June 25 (Reuters) - China should buy more gold because the dollar is poised for a fall and the metal is needed to support the greater international role envisaged for the yuan, a senior researcher with the ruling Communist Party said on Thursday"
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"Chinese companies, at Beijing's bidding, are also snapping up energy and commodity supplies around the globe to fuel its fast-growing growing economy."
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"China disclosed on April 24 that it had increased its holdings of gold to 1,054 tonnes from 600 tonnes since 2003.
However, China's foreign exchange reserves have grown so fast over the same period that gold's share of the stockpile, the largest in the world, has shrunk.
Li cited the high share of gold in the foreign exchange reserves of the United States, Italy, Germany and France, to argue that China's gold holdings, which account for about 1.6 percent of its reserves, are too small."
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"But, in a very preliminary step towards that goal, China is paving the way for greater use of the yuan beyond its borders.
The People's Bank of China has arranged currency swap deals with six countries since December totalling 650 billion yuan ($95 billion) so that trade and investment with China can be conducted in yuan, not dollars.
And China will soon allow selected firms in the southern province of Guangdong that trade with Hong Kong to settle their transactions in yuan, or renminbi.
'If the yuan should go international or become a reserve currency, China needs more gold to back that,' Li said.
When the yuan does become an international currency, which Li acknowledged was a long way off, he said the composition of the SDR should be reformed to include the Chinese currency.
Ideally, in the long term, the SDR would be made up of the dollar, euro, sterling and yen and yuan, each with a weighting of 20 percent, Li said."
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"The composition of the basket is reviewed every five years. the next review is due in 2010."
https://uk.biz.yahoo.com/25062009/323/update-1-china-buy-gold-hedge-dlr-fall-researcher.html