I wonder if the marked discrepancy between India and China household’s gold holdings, so starkly shown in the chart above, is due to China having a strong and perhaps speculative housing market, giving the mainland Chinese a second option for wealth accumulation?

Or is it simply that the accumulation of gold by China’s households/individuals hasn’t had time to build up following the removal of restrictions just a couple of years ago?

Or is it that India’s households have more heavily accumulated gold due to a long established cultural factor where poor Indians store their wealth as personal gold jewelery?

If the discrepancy is due to the “time in the market” factor then we probably can expect China’s massive rural population to emulate India’s and that would give the gold market a very substantial “second” leg.