China & Silver

SPECIAL EDITION

22 March 2026 -- Sunday

As you should be more than aware of at this point in the game, the silver inventories at the Shanghai Gold and Shanghai Future Exchanges are back to levels not seen since around Q3/2015...which is basically nothing at all. Here's the latest chart from Nick that shows that. Click to enlarge.

Then, in the wee hours of Saturday morning, Nick sent around the next three charts that because my Saturday column being long enough already, I decided to put off posting them until earl this coming week.

But then GATA's secretary/treasurer Chris Powell dispatched a directly related Bloomberg story from Sunday morning PDT, headlined "China pulls silver from global markets to meet surging demand" -- and linked here. It's for that reason I decided to post something on Sunday, rather than postpone it.

The first two charts show silver imports into and out of China...updated with two months of data...January and February.

The February data shows that they imported 450.6 tonnes/14.487 million troy ounces -- and exported only 291.8 tonnes/9.382 million troy ounces. Click to enlarge for both.

This is the first time since mid 2024 that China has imported more silver than it has exported, which you can see in the 10-year chart below.  Click to enlarge as well.

The above chart is one that I've posted in my column on many occasions over the years, but now merits closer study. As I've been pointing out over that time period, they became a net exporter of silver starting in Q3/2020 -- and that trend reached its peak in September of last year.

Since then, the trend [black line] is showing signs of a reversal. The January and February data points don't prove anything...but the trend since September is of some interest.

As you know, China has granted export licenses to a whole bunch of companies that allows them to export silver this year. I've always been of the opinion that these export licenses could be restricted or pulled -- and have stated that multiple times since that news came out sometime in Q3 of last year.

Along with the rapidly shrinking inventories at the SGE and SHFE so far this year...the imploding silver inventories at the COMEX and SLV...plus a whole raft of other silver ETFs and mutual funds...is something else I've been pointing out for months now.

Here's one last chart from Nick showing the silver inventories at all the COMEX depositories going back to very late March 2011 when JPMorgan opened their COMEX silver vault in New York a week before they ravaged the silver price the following Sunday night at the Globex open in New York. And with no exceptions that matter, all the COMEX depositories have seen precipitous declines in their silver inventories starting about a year ago.

And as I point out in every Saturday column, Ted Butler's inquiries of both SLV and JPMorgan many years back, led him to the conclusion that around 103 million troy ounces of silver held by JPMorgan in New York is actually being held in trust for SLV...which, if true -- and I suspect that it is...puts JPMorgan's COMEX silver inventories around the 45 million oz...not the 148 million they say they have. Click to enlarge.

As Phil Baker...past CEO of Hecla Mining -- and past President of The Silver Institute...has stated twice in public podcasts over the last six months...the demand for physical silver is "rapacious".

Also, as you know, silver is well into its sixth year of a structural deficit -- and this data point from China just released, is yet another straw in the wind that despite the current 'wash, rinse & spin' cycle engineered by the collusive commercial traders of whatever stripe...the days of double-digit silver prices are numbered.

In light of that, I'm wondering if the efforts of the Big 8 commercial traders to reduce their short position in it -- and gold, to new record lows...aren't in preparation for this exact event.

But, as I keep pointing out, it won't happen until it's allowed...or in a news vacuum.

So we wait some more.

Ed