Bloomberg reports that gold is flowing from some Western vaults to China: “The Chinese don’t want US dollars anymore, they want gold.“ In 2011, Dan O’Connor wrote on “China’s Hard-Money History:
So deeply rooted in the culture were gold and silver that the Chinese people upheld a metallic currency longer than all Western nations, even though their currency was consistently destroyed, manipulated and confiscated by governments up until the 1940s, when they ultimately reverted to paper. In fact, a major factor for the runaway inflation that took place at the very end of Cheng Kai Shek’s rule in the 1930s was triggered by the silver coins that had been soaked off the Chinese market. The silver was brought over to the United States under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Silver Purchase Act.” The ensuing paper currency system was untenable and led to widespread economic instability that undermined Shek’s legitimacy as ruler and caused many of his supporters to shift allegiance to Mao Ze Dong and the Communist Party.
