The State Administration of Foreign Exchange published its official reserve assets table for 2026 on 7 September, recording China’s gold reserves at 76.73 million fine troy ounces at the end of August against 76.08 million at the end of July. The People’s Bank of China holds those reserves, and the table states them in fine ounces alone, rounded to the nearest 10,000. SAFE publishes levels and not monthly changes, so the 650,000 fine ounces between July and August is a difference of two rounded figures.
The LBMA Good Delivery specification admits gross weights between 350 and 430 oz at a minimum fineness of 995.0, so a holding stated in fine ounces converts into bars only through a weight list, bar by bar. A counterparty buying 400 oz Good Delivery bars settles on that basis: the governing quantity is fine weight from the weight list against the stamped fineness, not the nominal printed against the format. A 1 kg cast bar at 999.9 settles differently, since its fine content is effectively its stamped weight. The two also come from different production — the 400 oz Good Delivery bar is a wholesale line, while minted and cast formats from 1 oz to 1 kg run off the refiners’ standard bar ranges — so accumulation of this size draws on the 400 oz line rather than the kilobar range. Monthly additions roughly doubled between May and July, from 320,000 to 640,000 fine ounces, and August sits at that level.
The table states a holding in fine ounces and a valuation in US dollars; the dollar figure moves with the gold price and measures no metal. Bar counts, refiner marks and vault locations appear nowhere in it, and the 2026 table covers January to August only.