Shanghai Gold Exchange: China’s gold exchange
The Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) is the exchange for physical gold in China. Unlike COMEX, it mainly trades spot contracts with delivery, and a large share of imported gold enters the Chinese market through it.
How did the SGE come about?
The Shanghai Gold Exchange opened on 30 October 2002. Its rules are supervised by the People’s Bank of China.
Its members include large Chinese commercial banks, foreign banks and companies from gold production, processing and trading. The exchange offers spot trading with delivery, deferred delivery and night trading.
What is traded on the SGE?
The focus is on physical gold. Spot contracts such as Au99.99 refer to bars with 99.99% fineness that are delivered in the exchange’s vaults. There are also smaller units such as Au100g and deferred delivery contracts such as Au(T+D), which resemble futures.
The SGE also trades silver and platinum. Alongside exchange trading, there is an over-the-counter segment. Prices are quoted in yuan, usually per gram.
What is the Shanghai Gold Benchmark?
On 19 April 2016, the SGE launched the Shanghai Gold Benchmark, the first gold benchmark price in yuan. It is set on every trading day in two auctions, at 10:15 and 14:15 Beijing time. The auction refers to physically delivered kilo bars with a fineness of at least 99.99%, quoted in yuan per gram. The trading code is SHAU, and the minimum price step is 0.01 yuan per gram.
Before each auction, the exchange collects reference prices over a five-minute window. If the auction does not produce a valid price, SGE rules provide that the average of Au99.99 trades in that window applies. If there were no trades in that window either, the previous benchmark price is carried over.
The benchmark complements the London LBMA Gold Price with a reference value during Asian trading hours. Comparing the two prices after converting to dollars shows whether gold in China is trading at a premium or a discount. This difference is seen as an indicator of domestic demand.
How does gold get into China?
Gold imports are regulated in China. Only a limited number of banks may import gold for the domestic market with the approval of the People’s Bank of China, and the central bank controls volumes through quotas. According to market observers, gold imported this way must first be sold through a gold exchange, which in practice means the SGE.
Exports from the domestic market are heavily restricted. As a result, gold generally flows into China but hardly flows out again. The quantities customers withdraw from SGE vaults are therefore seen as a rough gauge of Chinese wholesale demand. The World Gold Council analyses them regularly.
What is SGE International?
In September 2014, the SGE set up a subsidiary in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, Shanghai Gold Exchange International, with its own International Board. There, foreign banks and dealers can also trade directly and buy and sell gold in yuan without entering the regulated domestic market.
According to the SGE, in 2019 almost half of China’s gold imports ran through the International Board. In June 2025, the SGE also opened a certified vault in Hong Kong, intended to facilitate trading outside the mainland.
