China is the world's largest platinum consumer market, where platinum bar and coin investment grew from about 1 tonne in 2019 to nearly 13 tonnes in 2025, according to the World Platinum Investment Council's Shanghai Platinum Week takeaways (16 July 2026). That growth runs through three channels reshaped within a single year: the Shanghai Gold Exchange's physical spot contract, the new Guangzhou Futures Exchange derivatives market, and import and re-export trade through Hong Kong. This page connects the 2025 import surge, the lost Shanghai Gold Exchange tax break, the GFEX launch and bonded-zone warehousing into one dated narrative, with the sources named at each step rather than a single blended figure.
What Is China's Role in the Platinum Market?#
China's platinum market runs on three separate channels: the Shanghai Gold Exchange's physical spot contract, the Guangzhou Futures Exchange's new derivatives market, and direct import and re-export trade through Hong Kong. Each channel sits inside the wider platinum group metals market, but China trades platinum differently from every other major market: no other country combines a state-linked physical exchange, a newly launched futures market and entrepot warehousing of sanctioned Russian metal in the same trading year. The map below places each channel on one page.
China's 2025 Platinum Import Surge and Re-Export#
Platinum exports to China surged in April and May 2025, which Johnson Matthey attributes mainly to a jump in jewelry fabrication, tightening the global platinum market at the same time. The firm's May 2026 PGM Market Report adds that some of that activity likely had a speculative component, and that part of the jewelry manufactured during the surge was recycled and returned to the market as prices rose. The surge combined with a separate US tariff scare that pulled metal into NYMEX warehouses, and together the two events drained liquidity from Europe's trading hubs: short-term platinum lease rates rose from about 3% in late 2024 to above 20% by mid-2025, Johnson Matthey reports. That tightness fed directly into the platinum market deficit that WPIC and Johnson Matthey both recorded for 2025, though the two houses size it differently.
Between August and October 2025, more than 15 tonnes (about 500,000 troy ounces) of platinum was re-exported from Hong Kong back to European trading hubs, Johnson Matthey reports, meaning metal counted as Chinese demand in one quarter reappeared in Europe two quarters later. The reversal shows why import figures alone cannot measure Chinese consumption: customs data record a border crossing, not a sale to an end user, and platinum crossed that particular border twice within the same year. National trade-data tools track the customs crossing itself, but only Johnson Matthey's dated reporting sets the two crossings against each other and explains why they happened. A researcher reading only the April-May import spike would conclude Chinese demand had jumped by roughly 500,000 oz; reading the August-October reversal alongside it shows most of that metal never left the international trading system at all.
The Shanghai Gold Exchange Platinum Contract#
The Shanghai Gold Exchange's Pt99.95 contract is a physical spot contract for platinum bars of at least 99.95% purity, delivered through SGE-certified vaults in a 1-kilogram contract unit priced in Chinese yuan per gram, according to the Shanghai Gold Exchange. It is the SGE's only platinum contract: unlike SGE gold, platinum trading carries no benchmark "fixing" auction and no deferred T+D contract, so this single spot contract holds the exchange's entire platinum volume. The Shanghai Gold Exchange is China's state-backed bullion market, and its certified-vault delivery ties every platinum trade to metal already sitting inside the country, which is why SGE volumes were long read as a proxy for Chinese jewelry fabrication, a proxy broken by the change described next.
The End of the 13% VAT Exemption, November 2025#
The Chinese government ended a 13% VAT exemption on platinum sold on the Shanghai Gold Exchange in November 2025, a benefit that had applied only to platinum imported by the state-controlled China Platinum Company, and SGE platinum trading volumes collapsed as a result, Johnson Matthey's May 2026 PGM Market Report states. The removal broke a long-standing analytical shortcut: Johnson Matthey notes that SGE volumes had in the past been a good proxy for jewelry demand, a relationship the VAT change severed almost overnight. Traders who priced platinum through the exemption now face the same tax treatment as any other importer, which Johnson Matthey identifies as the direct cause of the volume collapse rather than a change in underlying consumption. A single tax instrument, dated to the day, moved more volume off an exchange here than any recorded shift in physical demand.
GFEX: China's First Platinum and Palladium Futures Market#
The Guangzhou Futures Exchange (GFEX) launched China's first exchange-traded platinum and palladium futures and options on 27 November 2025, denominated in yuan and physically settled with platinum ingots or platinum sponge from approved domestic and internationally accredited suppliers, according to the World Platinum Investment Council, citing GFEX. No other global futures exchange accepts sponge, a granular industrial form, as a deliverable grade, a design choice that ties the contract to China's catalyst and glass-industry demand rather than only to bullion. GFEX trades separately from the Shanghai Gold Exchange: one exchange prices physical spot metal, the other prices forward derivatives, and neither replaces the other. Accepting sponge for delivery also lets China's own catalyst producers and glass manufacturers settle a futures contract with the same industrial-grade material they actually consume, rather than converting it into bar form first.
GFEX's first physical deliveries were executed in June 2026: 2,276 kilograms of platinum and 2,224 kilograms of palladium, with institutional participation reported at 61% for platinum and 57% for palladium, WPIC's Shanghai Platinum Week takeaways (16 July 2026) state. Converted at 32.1507466 troy ounces per kilogram, those deliveries equal about 73,175 oz t of platinum and 71,503 oz t of palladium, a combined 144,678 oz t settled in the contract's first seven months (a DailyPlatinum calculation). The high institutional share shows professional trading desks, not retail speculators, driving early settlement volume on the new exchange.
Entrepot Warehousing: Russian PGM Flows Into China#
Entrepots are bonded zones where metal is stored duty-free until delivery or re-export, and Johnson Matthey reports a notable increase in Russian palladium moving into China through them since September 2025. Material quantities of Russian PGM have entered the Chinese market this way since mid-2023, largely because Russian palladium and sanctions cut Nornickel off from its usual Western buyers and left China as one of the few markets still willing to take the metal. Inside an entrepot, no Chinese import duty or VAT is charged until the metal leaves the zone for delivery to a domestic buyer or is re-exported elsewhere, so a large entrepot inventory can sit for months without appearing in either country's finished-trade statistics as a completed sale.
Johnson Matthey states plainly that it cannot ascertain the precise time of sale, or whether stocks of unsold metal are accumulating in China, after noting that it assumes most of the entrepot metal has been or will be sold into the domestic market, in its May 2026 PGM Market Report. DailyPlatinum calls that gap the vault question: metal can sit inside a bonded zone, untaxed and unsold, for an unknown period, and no published source counts how much is there. This page does not publish a figure for unsold entrepot stock, because none exists in Johnson Matthey's own reporting; a number here would be an estimate presented as data.
China's Platinum Investment Demand: Bars and Coins#
China's platinum bar and coin investment reached nearly 13 tonnes in 2025, up from about 1 tonne in 2019, and Metals Focus's "China Bars ≥500g" investment line is forecast at 185,000 troy ounces (185 koz) for 2026, up from 165 koz in 2025, according to WPIC's Shanghai Platinum Week takeaways (16 July 2026) and Platinum Quarterly data. The two series measure related but not identical things: the koz line counts only investment bars of 500 grams or larger and excludes bars bought by industrial companies, while the tonnage figure covers all bar and coin investment.
| Year | China bar/coin investment (tonnes, WPIC) | "China Bars ≥500g" (koz, Metals Focus) |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | About 1 | Not published |
| 2022 | Not published | 90 |
| 2023 | Not published | 134 |
| 2024 | Not published | 162 |
| 2025 | Nearly 13 | 165 |
| 2026 forecast | Not published | 185 |
Source: WPIC Shanghai Platinum Week takeaways (16 July 2026); Metals Focus data via WPIC Platinum Quarterly.
That growth outpaces most other reported platinum investment markets: investing in platinum through bars, coins, ETFs and futures disagrees region by region on direction, while China's bar and coin line has climbed almost every year since 2019. Metals Focus attributes the steady climb to expanding retail distribution and to platinum's price gap with gold, a substitution effect also recorded in other Asian markets. Unlike the SGE and GFEX flows above, bar and coin investment is metal that leaves the trading system entirely, held by Chinese retail and institutional buyers rather than warehoused for delivery or re-export.
China's Platinum Jewelry and Industrial Demand#
China's platinum jewelry and industrial demand are covered on their own dedicated pages; this page focuses instead on the exchange, import and investment mechanics that move metal into and out of the country. Platinum jewelry demand: China, India and the West sets China's jewelry consumption against India's and the West's on one page. Industrial platinum use, in glass production and chemical catalysis, is smaller than jewelry and investment demand in China and is not broken out separately on this page. Readers comparing consumption volumes rather than trading mechanics should start on that jewelry and industrial demand page instead.
China Platinum Market FAQ#
Does China mine platinum?#
No: China holds no meaningful primary platinum mine production. The USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 lists world platinum mine production only for the United States, Canada, Russia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and other countries combined, with China absent from that table entirely. Every troy ounce of platinum used in China, whether for the SGE contract, GFEX delivery or jewelry fabrication, therefore arrives as an import. Platinum producing countries ranks the five listed producers by output.
Why did Chinese platinum imports surge in 2025?#
Chinese platinum imports surged in April and May 2025 mainly because of a jump in jewelry fabrication, Johnson Matthey reports, though it notes some of that activity likely had a speculative component and that part of the jewelry made during the surge was later recycled and returned to the market as prices rose.
What is the SGE Pt99.95 contract?#
The SGE's Pt99.95 contract is a physical spot contract for 99.95%-pure platinum bars, priced in yuan per gram in a 1-kilogram contract unit, with no benchmark "fixing" or deferred T+D contract of the kind that exists for SGE gold, according to the Shanghai Gold Exchange.
Is GFEX the same as the Shanghai Gold Exchange?#
No: GFEX is a separate exchange from the SGE. The SGE trades physical spot platinum through its Pt99.95 contract, while GFEX trades platinum and palladium futures and options, launched on 27 November 2025 and physically settled with ingots or sponge. The platinum price today, set on other markets entirely, is tracked on platinum price today.