You can bring in as much as you like, but you are required to declare anything over a certain amount -- generally $5,000.

IMO US$ is more negotiable.

Gold is volatile and the fluctuations can be wide. besides, difficult to carry around $50k in gold in your pocket or to use it when you want to buy something in a hirry.

Also, in China gold is not practical. It can only be bought or sold at a select few government companies and even then not in what they term "good delivery" gold.

As long as you have a passport and a valid visa it really is easy. Not sure about the 1 hour though. Sometimes there are long waiting periods in the bank and sometimes tellers are not exactly speedy when you get to the window.

9% per year is not bad.

I like gold, just not in China. Unlike in the US, gold in China is not practical. Too few places to buy and sell and the form it is sold in is not "good delivery" by international standards. If you bring it back home you'll have to pay an assay fee on every unit you sell.

If by "good delivery" you are referring to the Good Delivery rules from the LBMA, that doesn't sound very practical as we are talking about ~400 tr oz-sized bars!

I had the same concerns as you, and did some research about buying investment gold in China. Firstly, the transaction fees charged over spot price are quite low - for example, China Gold charges 8 RMB/gr when buying and 2 RMB/gr when selling (I'm pretty sure you've seen all the China Gold outlets popping up around the city - there's even one in T3). At the current price of around 300 RMB/gr, that works out to just over 3% round trip. But what's interesting is that China Gold offers a "storage/late delivery" option, whereby you pay now (based on the current spot price) and take delivery later. For the 6 months option, the fee on buying drops to 2 RMB/gr. I'm not sure what to make of this - are they short on supply right now, or is it a hedging strategy in case the price of gold drops later, or both?

Another place to buy gold is of course CaiBai. However, the downside with CaiBai is that it is always so packed there, and what happens if you decide to move to a different city (will China Gold charge a higher fee to buy it from you)?

Secondly, regarding concerns about authenticity/purity and what happens if you decide to leave China and take your gold with you, I was wondering the same thing. Even though the bars here are stamped with 999.9 purity, how can you be sure?

The investment gold bars that are sold at China Gold (and to an extent CaiBai) are from Zhongjin Gold and stamped with CHN GOLD. It so happens that Zhongjin Gold is on the LBMA's Good Delivery list, along with several other Chinese manufacturers:

http://www.lbma.org.uk/pages/index.cfm?page_id=29&title=gold_list

If you're still not convinced, CaiBai also sells bars from foreign-operated refineries at the same price as the CHN GOLD branded bars, one is Metalor SA and I forget who the other one is (it could be PAMP Suisse). Note that these bars all bear the marks of the foreign brands, but they are actually produced in China. To my knowledge, these foreign-branded bars are not stamped with "made in China" so you probably can't easily tell on visual inspection, but there should be a way to find out from the serial # and/or DataMatrix code.

(Image above from http://www.monstersandcritics.com/blogs/theworldinpictures/article_15437... )

That said, though Metalor SA is one of the leading gold refiners in the world, Metalor SA's Suzhou refinery has not yet made it to the LBMA Good Delivery List so I'm not sure you'd be better off buying the Chinese-produced Metalor bars over the CHN GOLD bars.

Myself, I'll probably end up buying some of the Metalor minted bars as I think they look pretty cool with the DataMatrix code, along with China Gold bars.

By the way, the bars from China Gold have a unique look to them for a cast bar:

http://www.goldbarsworldwide.com/PDF/BG_10_Categories.pdf
http://www.goldbarsworldwide.com/PDF/BI_7_GoldKilobars.pdf

5,000 USD in Cash taking out of China, yes.
You can bring upto USD50,000.- in Cash into China ( the upper limit amount of Foreign Currency an individual can exchange into RMB over one year ( 01 Jan - 31 Dec ) !

I would avoid bars with "Chinese characteristics". I have always had luck with JM, Englehard, Credit Suisse or Pamp Suisse. Personally, though, my all-time favorites are coins. There is probably not a place on thie Earth (except, maybe, for China) where you cannot easily liquidate Canadiam Maple Leafs or Gold American Eagles.

Actually, I like those coins. There is a certain built-up demand for them in the US so they are relatively easy to liquidate. However, for strictly investment purposes I probably would include very few Chinese Pandas in my precious metals portfolio.

Unlike American Silver Eagles and Canadian Maple Leafs, the Chinese Panda commands more of a purchase premium in the US without the demonstrated scarcity which usually necessitates the premium. As a result, a significant percentage of a Chinese Panda's resale value is numismatic related whereas in Eagles and Maple Leafs it is almost exclusively related to world gold / silver prices.

I have been able to purchase Pandas in China for less than in the US.

You are correct. The Panda design does change each year and also the mintage is somewhat limited, unlike the US and Canadian bullion coins.

Pandas are great coins, but one just needs to understand that there is more than just the market price of gold in play when using them as investment vehicles. Having numismatic value, there is more opportunity for gains / losses that do not correlate to precious metals prices.