June 2009 Comment: When China recently expressed its interest in purchasing $80 billion in gold (about 2600 tonnes), it profoundly altered the gold market's long-standing synergy in three significant ways. First, it used to be that the threat of central bank gold sales would damage market sentiment. Now the threat of significant sales has been met with the threat of significant purchases. Second, by becoming gold's most prominent champion, China mounts an aggressive defense of its domestic gold mining industry, and by proxy the rest of the industry as well. Third, by elevating gold to prominence in its national reserves, China lays the groundwork for the yuan's future use as a prominent reserve currency. In one fell swoop China has done much to alter the standing gold market synergy.