Peru has emerged as a growing supplier of gold to China, with exports to the Asian giant accelerating sharply in 2025, raising concerns about the origins of the mineral and the role of informal and illegal mining in fuelling the trade.

According to official data reported by Reuters, Peru’s gold exports to China reached $947mn in the first half of 2025, already exceeding the $885mn recorded in the whole of 2024. This represents almost a fourfold increase compared with the same period last year, and a striking jump from the $173mn exported in 2023. Overall, Peru’s gold exports worldwide rose 46% year-on-year, totalling $8.57bn through June. While China still trails Canada, India and Switzerland as Peru’s main buyers, its share has grown disproportionately.

A major component of this surge is linked to the booming trade in gold concentrates, a category little relevant until recently. Data reviewed by Infobae show that shipments of this product —polymetallic concentrates whose most valuable element is gold— rose nearly twentyfold from 24,000 tonnes in 2019 to 400,000 tonnes in 2024, worth $884mn. Almost all are sent to China, with minor volumes directed to Germany. The exports are handled predominantly by trading companies rather than mine operators, including global firms such as Trafigura, IXM (owned by Chinese group CMOC) and Humon Latin America, which has direct links to smelting facilities in China.

Analysts highlight that this structure obscures the mineral’s provenance. Traders acquire concentrates from a web of small plants and suppliers across Peru, many of which process ore extracted by informal or illegal miners. Imports from neighbouring countries such as Ecuador, Bolivia and Colombia are also channelled through Peruvian ports before being re-exported to China.

This rapid expansion coincides with China’s broader strategy to diversify its reserves away from the US dollar. An investigation by The Washington Post described how Beijing, through state institutions and private networks, has been stockpiling gold to shield itself from potential US sanctions. In parallel, Chinese-linked networks have been implicated in fostering illegal mining in regions of the Global South, including Indonesia, Ghana and French Guiana, by supplying heavy machinery and advanced extraction techniques. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has warned that organised crime has penetrated global gold supply chains, with illicit flows estimated at over $30bn annually.

Although Peru was not explicitly mentioned in the Post’s investigation, the parallels are evident. The opaque nature of the country’s concentrate exports, coupled with the dominance of intermediaries and the documented growth of informal mining post-pandemic, raises questions about the degree to which Chinese demand may be indirectly fuelling environmentally destructive and socially disruptive practices in the Andes.

With gold prices hovering above $3,000 per ounce and forecast by Deutsche Bank to average $3,700 in 2026, incentives for expanding supply remain strong. For Peru, the challenge lies in balancing the windfall of booming exports with the risks of entrenching illicit mining and deepening dependency on a trade increasingly shaped by China’s strategic financial agenda.