You are right! I am not taking the story seriously!
My comment was more a reflection on human gullibility which seems to be amplified in precious metal markets.
Is this loss important?
Considering the amount of money involved, not very. In the gobal financial markets, gold is a non core business.* The loss of 60 billion in gold will not threaten the stability of the core markets in credit, FX or interest rates.
The Chinese are just stealing from one another (again)!
*According to the BIS, http://www.bis.org/statistics/otcder/dt1920a.pdf the notional value of gold derivatives is 0.1% of the notional value of interest rate derivatives!
