Futures trading is already active in other commodities like pepper, etc. and perhaps there is no reason for disallowing gold to be traded again, though under an appropriate regulatory framework. The focus of the regulation could be to ensure that trading is undertaken within prudential limits and correlated to risk-taking capacity, to prevent systemic weakness and to induce transparency in trading practices.
Looking at China’s experience in opening up, all the liberalized sectors have become more competitive and provided better services, while the closed ones are less efficient and backward. So I think financial sector opening up is good for China, especially for the Chinese people, because it enables competition between domestic and foreign institutions.