Already China are buying up all the gold and there's real credible talk of China linking their currency to Gold. It'll be the only currency in the world backed by anything and there will be a massive rush to get it pushing the value up. It'll be the end of the petro-Dollar as we know now for international trade and world reserve currency.
There is absolutely zero chance that the Chinese government will link their currency to gold. China has been following the policy of driving down the value of their currency in order to promote exports for a long time. Linking their currency to gold would have the opposite effect.
True, however, China will never hold the world reserve currency with a Yuan backed only in USD. It has no positive benefit over USD.
China may feel they're at the point they can stand on their own.
Maybe they want to transform from the country with cheap exports driven by low wages and low standards of living, and possibly they want to do what America has done for the last 70 years and export their debt around the globe, drive up living standards and consume more crap.
It seems plausible to me that China would want to hold the world's reserve currency and all the benefits that it will bring. To do this they need a reason for people to want to hold this currency over the USD.