Against the backdrop of the staggering growth of inflows into gold-backed ETFs globally, the Chinese gold-backed ETF(exchange traded fund) market became the main driver of the 14.3 metric tons of growth of Asian-listed funds in the third quarter, and Chinese gold reserves have grown for 10 months in a row since last December, reports said.

"Assets under management in Chinese gold-backed ETFs reached a record high of about 50 tons, as investors were attracted by the gold price rally," said Wang Lixin, managing director of World Gold Council China.

Since resuming purchases in December 2018, Chinese gold reserves have grown steadily in the past 10 months, and saw a modest growth of 21.8 tons in the period between July and September. As of the end of September, China's gold reserves ranked the seventh largest worldwide, or 1,948.3 tons, according to the report on Gold Demand Trends Q3 2019 published on Tuesday by the World Gold Council.

Gold reserves have been a key part of countries' diversified international reserves. With the properties of a financial asset and a commodity, gold is conducive to adjusting and optimizing the overall risk and return characteristics of the portfolios of international reserves, according to Wang Chunying, spokesperson of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange.