Gold Aiding Spread Of The Renminbi

This item is one that a true gold bug will be hard-pressed not to read something into. Wang Zhenying, deputy director-general of the Department of Financial Management at the Shanghai office of the People’s Bank of China, has offered the opinion that offering gold products deniminated in renminbi yuan is a good way to internationalize the PRC's currency.

Pricing commodities in the currency “helps China’s goal to internationalize the yuan,” [he] said today. “Gold is a good choice to have yuan trading.”...

“We agree that yuan-denominated gold trading will help enhance the yuan’s global status,” Chen Shiyong, general manager of financial markets at Industrial Bank Co., said in interview today. “We also would like to be part of the efforts to increase gold investment products available to the public.”

It's nice to think that this push is really the thin edge of the remonetization-of-gold wedge, but it seems to relate more to lifting restrictions on the use of the PRC currency so as to increase the PRC's influence in the world.

I can't say that they're going in the wrong direction, though.