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This is CBS Island in the world. I'm John Batsu with my colleague and friend Gordon Chang and we're going to China via the gold market and to help us understand this phenomena buying gold we

welcome Fraser Howie

Fraser is the co-author of red capitalism the fragile financial foundations of China's

extraordinary rise, gold fever.

Fraser, a very good day to you in the highlands of Scotland.

They're buying gold in China, but not investment gold, gold jewelry, gold

amulets, gold everything, the consumer's buying gold. Why? What's happened? Good

evening to you. Good evening, John Gordon. That's a good question. I think it's interesting. I think the story of gold has morphed over the past couple of years or so. China has been buying up gold reserves and there's been no question

China's been a big buyer of gold but it seems that much of the story let's say a year ago or

six months ago was that it was state-driven, central bank-driven, that this was some sort of,

was that a hidden play here to decouple from the dollar or somehow to change the dynamics,

what sort of international finance, and more recently and even I think today in the

F T there's a story about it that it's now become much more of just a speculative

type of play that there is now as you say the consumer is

...