HONG KONG (MarketWatch) -- China's appetite for gold as a way to diversify its foreign-exchange reserves is limited because of the metal's poor returns over the past 30 years, the nation's foreign-exchange regulator was cited as saying in a report Tuesday.
Yi Gang, director of China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said China's gold reserves, at 1,054 metric tons, were the fifth-largest in the world, Dow Jones Newswires reported, citing comments by Yi at a press conference at the National People's Congress.
But Yi downplayed any desire to add the holdings as a strategy to diversity the nation's $2.4 trillion foreign exchange stockpile.
