That’s a question that Westerners have been asking for, oh, several millennia now. Or at least since Marco Polo aimed his ponies down the old Silk Road in 1271.

Now as then, China keeps its own counsel. We know what they want us to know, plus what we can surmise from rumor and reading between the lines. But lately, we’ve been able to add presumption to news and come up with something that looks very significant.

Specifically, there’s been a flood of tantalizing stories out of the East that, taken together, strongly suggest a growing preoccupation with a form of money that was ancient even in Signor Polo’s time. And it ain’t silk. It’s gold.

We already learned, back in April, that China has been salting away bullion for the previous six years, out of sight of international gold watchers. To the tune of 14.6 million ounces. Now the evidence suggests that that

From the first paragraph of my Saturday commentary…”I don’t know what it is about that [one hour and change] stretch of time between the Sydney close and the London open…but if there is going to be a down day…it starts right there a large percentage of the time.” Any questions? Actually, both gold and silver got sold off the moment that the New York bullion banks opened for business 6:00 p.m. on Sunday night…which is very early Monday morning in Far East trading. Shortly before 3:00 p.m. in Hong Kong, gold had almost made it back to unchanged…and silver was actually up a couple of cents when the hammer fell. The bottom for gold came very shortly after the London a.m. gold fix at 5:30 New York time…and in silver, shortly after the Comex open. The ‘rally’ in the US dollar that started at the same time as the precious

China will not save Western banks

The chairman of China’s largest sovereign wealth fund has said he “does not have the courage” to plough money into Wall Street and the City.

By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai Last Updated: 5:20PM GMT 04 Dec 2008

Lou Jiwei, the chairman and chief executive of the China Investment Corporation, a $200bn (£135bn) fund, said China had no intention of “saving” the West from the financial crisis.

“Right now we do not have the courage to invest in financial institutions because we do not know what problems they may have,” said Mr Lou, at the Clinton Global Initiative conference in Hong Kong.

China’s disastrous investments in Blackstone, the private equity fund, Morgan Stanley, the investment bank, and Barclays Bank appear to have dulled the appetite for further gambles.

Mr Lou sank $3bn into Blackstone at $29.605 a share in June 2007. The share price of the fund closed yesterday at $6.04,