Largest Ever Chinese Gold Reserve Found But There's Just One Problem

www.zerohedge.com

Written by Nathan McDonald (Click for Original)

Gold is an incredibly rare, valuable and thus highly sought after asset. This is just as true today, despite what Western mainstream media would have you believe, as it has been for thousands of years.

When you pick up a solid gold bar for the first time in your life (an experience I recommend to all) you come to the true realization that "this is money". Not the phony fiat nonsense that governments around the world have manipulated the masses into saving their life's wealth; not some IOU that they tell you will "one day" have value.

The Chinese government and its people know this more than just about any other country in the world, perhaps only rivaled by Russia and India. Because of this fact, they are now the worlds largest producer of gold and one of the largest "official" holders of the yellow metal.

This connection to gold runs deep within the Chinese population and there is a strong desire to continue on with this trend. The only problem with this fact goes back to my opening paragraph, gold is rare.

Not only is gold incredibly rare, but it is becoming increasingly more difficult to find new reserves. To make matters worse, much of the easy to mine gold has already been discovered and mined, leading exploration companies to search for the king of metals in locations where the ore is becoming increasingly difficult to extract.

One such search has hit the motherload. The Shandong Provincial No. 3 Institute of Geological and Mineral Survey on Monday announced that they have discovered the largest ever Chinese gold deposit.

The only problem? It's 2000 meters undersea. This discovery which is located in Laizhou, eastern ?China’s Shandong province, is estimated to contain 470.47 tonnes of gold. This amount is truly staggering and equates to approximately $16 billion US dollars, based on current gold prices.

The magnitude of a project to acquire this gold should not be overlooked. Yes, offshore mining technology has come a long way, but the cost to achieve the end results may make the venture utterly unprofitable at current market prices.

Yet the true takeaway from this story is the fact that companies are having to venture further and further into completely undesirable locations to find new reserves and should point out the fact that eventually prices WILL make these ventures profitable.

The reality is, the world isn't creating anymore gold. As the global economy continues down this path of uncertainty there will be one asset that the world will turn to in its hour of need more than any other- the king of metals, gold.