After years of lobbying by the world's gold industry, Beijing has finally signalled that it is now close to starting the slow process of opening up its tightly regulated gold sector, and allow more freedom among consumers to buy and sell the yellow metal.
But analysts are already warning there are significant pitfalls ahead, which could undermine the process, and fail to generate the much-needed liquidity into the market.
During the past 10 years, the mainland's domestic gold industry has been plagued by smuggling - both into and out of the country - as producers sought to exploit the differences in State Council-sanctioned domestic prices, and the prevailing international price.
When the domestic price was lower than the international price, analysts say huge amounts of gold were smuggled out of the mainland, when the domestic price was higher, the process would go into reverse.
The effect of such movements of unofficial gold is thought to have become so dramatic the hidden cost on the mainland's balance of payments is estimated at between US$500 million and US$4 billion.
The State Council has since passed the responsibility of setting the domestic price of gold on to the People's Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank, but producers have still been bound by strict production quotas, and have been allowed to only sell its stock to the PBOC.