A staff member organizes gold jewelry at a gold store in Huzhou city, East China's Zhejiang Province on April 3, 2024. Photo: VCG

Global gold prices have surged strongly in recent weeks, hitting a record high of $2,300 per ounce on Thursday, an increase of more than $200 per ounce since the beginning of 2024. Last week's gold gain may have been triggered by market speculation that the US could move quickly to loosen its monetary policy. 

Industry analysts believe that the rising price of the precious metal is backed up and bolstered by broad investor bets on US interest rate cuts soon, which is to ramp up central bank gold purchases as well as speculative gold buying by investors, amid persistent geopolitical uncertainty in the world. 

Meanwhile, the Chinese yuan-denominated gold price has also shot up lately, increasing 9.68 percent in March, drawing growing attention from the market, the Xinhua News Agency reported. Since the start of this year, the world has seen a gold buying spree among retail Chinese purchasers.

Gold jewelry price is gaining pace in China's domestic market very quickly. At the well-known gold retailer Chow Tai Fook store in Beijing's SKP Shopping Mall, the Global Times found that gold jewelry price hit all-time pinnacle of more than 690 yuan ($95.4) per gram on Tuesday and remained above 660 yuan during the past few days, according to a store employee there.

The gold price at Beijing's major jewelry stores continued to surge with the highest selling price reaching 710 yuan per gram last week, domestic media outlets reported. A number of Chinese investors have put more weight on gold holding, believing the metal will not stop in gaining value in the following months.  

The skyrocketing price has contradictory impacts on gold buyers in China. "While some are bullish and continue buying, more investors seem to take a cautious attitude and stay at the sideline, as they believe that the price of gold has reached its peak and start to consider reducing their gold holdings now," said Liu Bao, an investment department manager at the downtown Beijing Guohua Jewelry Shop in an interview with the Global Times.

Market buying heats up 
"Gold is a safe-haven hard asset that could be used to hedge against increasing market risks, and its recent fluctuations are largely associated with the change of investor expectations about its future trajectory," Yu Qiao, a professor of international finance at the School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University, told the Global Times on Saturday.

The global gold jewelry market remained very resilient since early 2023 as public consumption last year went up by around 3 percent year-on-year to stand at 2,093 tons, according to data released by the World Gold Council (WGC) on January 31.

Notably, China's consumption of gold jewelry overtook India as the world's top consumer in 2023, becoming the main engine of consumption growth globally as public demand has strongly recovered post-pandemic. The country's total gold jewelry consumption reached 630 tons, up 10 percent year-on-year in 2023, the WGC said.

Overall consumption of gold expanded rapidly, backed up by strong demand in the over-the-counter (OTC) market, as well as from sustained strong buying by global central banks, according to the WGC. 

And, Chinese people's enthusiasm for purchasing gold has remained unabated, despite the prices are remaining at near record levels. Data showed that Chinese consumption of gold jewelry in 2023 reached a record high of 282 billion yuan, the WGC said, adding that demand for gold bars and gold coins in China is expected to remain robust in 2024.

The fact that Chinese consumers continue to show strong demand for gold jewelry reflects that the country's consumption capacity has kept on rising, Zhou Yinghao, a senior gold analyst at the Bank of Urumqi, told the Global Times on Saturday.

China's central bank, the People's Bank of China, added gold to its reserves for a 16th straight month in February, according to the Securities Daily. Bullion held by the People's Bank of China rose by about 390,000 ounces in February from a month earlier, taking total holdings to 72.58 million troy ounces.

According to Bloomberg, as nations have been adding gold to diversify their financial reserve assets, the growing purchase of gold by global central banks has been a significant driver of gold's strength in the past two years. 

Volatility in prices
Experts said gold is a special investment product that combines the attributes of a commodity, currency, and financial asset. It is also a hedge against the dollar, which has recently displayed higher volatility on the international market as investors wildly speculate when the US Federal Reserve, the central bank, is to cut the federal funds rates. 

"When inflation in major economies shows an upward trend and there emerges a greater risk of a depreciation of the US dollar's buying power, it may lead to a devaluation cycle of the greenback, but the investment value and upward momentum of gold are most likely to gain on the monetary market," Yu said.

Market analysts attributed elevated gold prices in recent weeks to the strengthening expectations of a US Federal Reserve rate cut, coupled with increasing geopolitical volatility. In 2024, demand for gold jewelry in China and India, two major gold consumers in the world, are likely to be stable. 

Wang Lixin, CEO of WGC (China) noted that, on the technical ground, the increasing number of long positions in major futures markets, including the gold future price in the New York Mercantile Exchange, has triggered more investors to enter the market.

Since the second half of 2023, the US national debt has ballooned by an astonishing $1 trillion every 100 days, with the country's gross federal debt approaching a whopping $35 trillion. More importantly, the sovereign credit of the US faces heightened risks of devaluation, Zhou said.

Global gold demand may struggle in 2024 as economic slowdowns and high prices start to bite, according to the WGC. But a good number of market analysts note that if the US Federal Reserve decides to reduce its key benchmark interest rate in June or July, market speculative demand for gold will continue to rise, which means the price of gold will probably climb even higher in the coming months.