China's ever-growing appetite for platinum jewelry has fuelled a boom in demand this year.
Explosive economic growth has led to many Chinese entrepreneurs raking in vast sums of cash, stimulating a huge demand for luxury goods that the world is struggling to keep up with.
Platinum industry experts Johnson Matthey anticipate that China's desire for platinum jewelry has lead to net growth in worldwide demand of 2.6 per cent.
That is confirmed by Philip Klapwijk, chairman of research firm GFMS Ltd, who told the Shanghai Daily: "The figures we put together for the first nine months were up by between five percent and 10 per cent year-on-year."
Platinum jewelry has been particularly popular in China this year thanks to a marketing campaign led by actress Zhang Zi, best known in the west for her role in the Oscar-winning 2000 Ang Lee movie, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" alongside action star Chow Yun-Fat.
