LI ZHIXIN spent weeks planning his one-day family tour of Beijing’s historic sites, but instead found himself in one of the city’s shopping malls, watching his wife happily trying on gold necklaces.
“I can’t complain. We just like gold,” said the 30-year-old steel plant worker from Tangshan, an industrial city southeast of Beijing.
“Gold is a better store of wealth than platinum,” he said, as his mother-in-law counted a wad of cash beside him. “Of course, diamonds are lovely. But we can’t afford the big ones and are not interested in small stones.”
They finally bought a pendant necklace for more than 3,000 yuan (US$439), more than two months’ income for an average Chinese urban resident.
With per-capita disposable income in cities up 17.2 percent to 13,786 yuan in 2007, gold jewelry is no longer beyond the reach of masses of Chinese consumers on the lookout for something luxurious.
“People buy gold jewelry for anniversaries, weddings, or as gifts for holidays,” said Daisy Yan, a saleswoman at Xin Dong An Department Store in downtown Beijing.
“First, it’s a pretty adornment, also I think it’s maybe about vanity, a way to show how rich the wearer is.”
Figures from the World Gold Council showed sales of gold jewelry in China hit a record high of 302.2 tons in 2007, up 34 percent on the previous year.
China has now overtaken the United States to become the world’s second-largest buyer of gold jewelry after India.
But behind the remarkable growth lies a deep Chinese traditional appreciation of the precious metal as a hedge against social and economic risks.
“I’m more confident in gold — we’ve been buying it for so many years in the past anyway,” said 78-year-old Wu Peifen, who was selecting a wedding gift for her grandson at Beijing’s Wangfujing Department Store.
High inflation and a 41-percent slump in the domestic stock market this year have added further momentum to China’s drive to buy gold.
“The stock market is not as good as before, and people do not feel safe parking all their savings in banks,” said Lin Yuhui, an analyst with China International Futures in Shenzhen.
“So they tend to buy gold as a means to hedge inflationary risks.” (SD-Agencies)
