China has been producing gold for more than 4,000 years and has been the worlds leading gold producer since 2009 yielding about 15% of the annual global production. The country produces 450 t Au per year and has government stated in-ground reserves of approximately 12,000 t Au; at least 29 deposits have endowments of at least 100 t Au. China is characterised by widespread exposures of Neoarchean and Paleoproterozoic rocks, yet there are no significant Precambrian gold deposits in China. Even if orogenic gold deposits formed in the pre-Paleozoic rocks, they would have been long lost to erosion because the deep crustal rocks now exposed in Chinas cratonic blocks have been exhumed from levels too deep for their preservation. Therefore, the oldest significant gold ores are no older than early Paleozoic. CITATION: Goldfarb, R J, Chang, Z, Qiu, K, White, N C and Yang, Z, 2019. Geological evolution of China and the resulting spatial-temporal distribution of gold resources, pp 2629 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).