China has ended more than a century of South African dominance of the gold mining industry to become the world's biggest producer of the ore.

Chinese gold output jumped to a record high of 276 tonnes last year, a 12 per cent increase over 2006, while South Africa produced 272 tonnes, the London-based precious metal consultancy, GFMS, said on Thursday.

China is already the world's biggest producer of aluminium, zinc and lead; the second largest of tin; and among the top 10 in copper, nickel and silver.

Its dominance in gold follows a 70 per cent jump in output in the past decade and is the latest sign of Beijing's efforts to boost its local supply of commodities to rein in surging and costly raw materials imports.

Bullion prices this week hit an all-time high of $914 a troy ounce as investors sought refuge from a weakening US dollar.

But in spite of the soaring prices, global gold production is falling, notably in South Africa, where output has halved in the past decade amid higher production costs, tougher safety regulations and more depleted mines.

Mark Bristow, the South African chief executive of London-listed Randgold Resources, said: "China is not overtaking South Africa, South Africa is shrinking below China." South Africa has been the world's largest gold producer since 1905.

Philip Klapwijk, GFMS executive chairman, said the fall in output in South Africa and other traditional producers, such as the US and Australia, was the main reason why "global gold production is not raising in reaction to record gold prices".

Between 2000 and 2007, global mined gold fell by 6.7 per cent in spite of bullion prices moving from about $270 an ounce to more than $850 an ounce.

South Africa's dominance of gold mining dates back to the discovery of the Witwatersrand reef in 1886, considered the "greatest goldfield in the world", on the edge of what is now Johannesburg.

The scale of the industry has been steadily diminishing since 1970 when it produced 1,000 tonnes a year, about three quarters of the world's supply at that time.

Industry leaders put a brave face on Thursday's news, saying the gold industry in South Africa still employed over 160,000.

"There is a lot of life in this old lady yet," said Roger Baxter, chief economist at Johannesburg's Chamber of Mines.