Abstract: The appropriate scale and structure of international reserves based on the financial stability is a research focus at home and abroad. It is generally believed that the totality of China’s foreign exchange reserve has been clearly excessive. This thesis constructs an analytical framework including gold reserves, financial instability, cross-border capital flows and variables of real economy, and consequently uses theoretical models and empirical methods to explore which factors are relevant to gold reserves in emerging market economies and measure the scale of China’s necessary gold reserves. This comprehensive research has some findings: a relative higher level of financial instability will directly result in a significant increased proportion of gold reserves; the ability of international reserves to withstand economic and financial crisis is limited; foreign exchange reserves and gold reserves are not simply alternative to each other. China monetary authorities should reduce the scale of foreign exchange reserves and simultaneously increase the scale of gold reserves so as to keep more than 3000 tons. In addition, the structure of the international reserves should be optimized to ensure domestic financial stability.