China’s gold, as a single cube

The holding

China’s gold reserve, in proportion

China's central bank holds about 2,313 tonnes of gold — among the five largest national gold hoards in the world. That is a number most people cannot picture, so picture this instead: gathered into one solid block, every bar of it would form a cube roughly 4.9 m on each side — about one and a half storeys tall. Gold is so dense (19.32 grams per cubic centimetre, about two and a half times the density of iron) that China's entire reserve, worth approximately $309 billion, would occupy only about 120 cubic meters.

Gold makes up 9.1% of China's official reserves — a deliberately small gold share — China keeps most of its reserves in dollars, euros and other currencies, holding bullion as a strategic minority. Measured against the world's monetary gold, that block is about 6.3% of all the bullion held by every central bank and treasury on the planet. China sits in Asia, the center of gravity for twenty-first-century gold accumulation.

The metal is held at Domestic vaults (PBOC), Beijing. In recent years China has been a net buyer, steadily adding to the pile — part of the broad return to gold among emerging-market and reserve-diversifying central banks. Whether a reserve is growing or steady, its physical footprint barely changes: even doubling China's gold would only widen the cube by about a quarter — the defining paradox of the metal is that staggering value keeps collapsing into a remarkably small space.

It is worth holding the comparison in mind. The largest reserve on Earth, the United States', is a cube only 7.5 m per side; all the gold ever mined in human history fits inside a cube about 22 m per side — the size of a seven-story building. China's share of that 6,000-year inheritance is the block you see above.