A BRIC of Gold
I know someone who represents a communist-aligned central bank — and they’ve been buying a lot of gold for their reserves, including supply coming through Russia in US dollars.
That matters, because it clarifies what’s real right now:
Precious metals are no longer just a trade.
They’re a policy instrument.
A real story is unfolding
China has moved toward tighter silver export licensing, publishing a list of approved exporters for 2026–2027.
But the market is also dealing with a parallel phenomenon:
AI-generated “silver channels” that remix one genuine policy lever into apocalyptic claims — often without documents, dates, or anything falsifiable.
That’s the new information hazard:
one authentic lever (export gatekeeping) can be amplified into a thousand synthetic narratives (silver squeeze, paper collapse, secret BRICS plot) that aren’t actually evidenced.
So the correct move isn’t to dismiss the whole topic — it’s to separate plumbing from propaganda.
The bigger frame: incentives can mimic coordination
China’s precious-metals controls and policy levers are incentivized — in parallel with Russia and other BRICS-aligned priorities — to:
bolster metals reserves and optionality
reduce petro-dollar vulnerability at the margins
diversify away from USD composition in reserves
build defensive capacity in global trade and settlement
That doesn’t require a “conspiracy.”
It requires incentives.
Russia’s behavior isn’t mysterious — it’s adaptive
Russia has clear reasons to emphasize gold and non-USD assets because sanctions changed the regime.
When reserves can be frozen, the value of politically neutral assets rises.
That’s not dramatic.
That’s rational balance-sheet defense.
China’s gold controls look like FX management first
China has a long history of ‘managing’ gold flows through licensing and quotas.
It’s macro stability:
managing FX demand (especially dollar demand)
managing capital leakage
managing onshore liquidity conditions
managing onshore vs offshore pricing dynamics
In plain terms:
gold is a valve in China’s financial plumbing.
The conclusion
When the world’s settlement system fractures, gold stops being a trade and becomes a geopolitical instrument.
And here’s the key: Incentives applied across multiple regimes are simply inevitable.