China sets record for gold imports from Russia
21 December 20:06
In November 2025, China purchased a record $961 million worth of gold from Russia, the largest deal in the history of bilateral trade in precious metals. This was reported by "Komersant Ukrainian" with reference to Russian propaganda media.
High volumes of supplies have been recorded for the second month in a row: in October, Russian gold exports to China were estimated at $930 million. In total, in the first 11 months of the year, China imported $1.9 billion worth of Russian gold, almost nine times more than in the same period last year, when supplies either did not exist or did not exceed $223 million.
The sharp increase in purchases comes amid Beijing’s active policy of building up gold reserves and reducing its dependence on the dollar. As the Financial Times wrote in mid-November, China could buy many times more gold in 2025 than is reflected in official statistics. According to Societe Generale, the volume of purchases could reach about 250 tons – more than a third of all purchases made by the world’s central banks this year. Such volumes, the FT notes, could have been one of the factors behind the rapid rise in gold prices, which have risen by about 55% since the beginning of the year.
At the end of November, it became known that the Bank of Russia for the first time started real sales of physical gold from its reserves to finance the state budget. According to media reports, citing the regulator’s press service, the Central Bank began to “mirror” the operations of the Ministry of Finance with gold from the National Welfare Fund (NWF). Previously, such transactions were virtual: the government sold gold to the Central Bank and the bullion remained in the country’s reserves.
Since the beginning of the war, the Ministry of Finance has sold 57% of the NWF’s gold reserves to cover the budget deficit – 232.6 tons out of the initial 405.7 tons. As of November 1, 2025, 173.1 tons of gold remained in the fund. The NWF’s total liquid assets (gold and RMB) decreased by 55%, from $113.5 billion to $51.6 billion.
These operations are directly related to the tense situation in Russian finance. According to the RF Ministry of Finance, in December of this year, oil and gas revenues are expected to fall short of the baseline, which will have to be compensated for by selling foreign currency and gold from the NWF.
