The country's foreign exchange reserves - the world's largest - rose $51 billion to $3.184 trillion last month, compared with $3.149 trillion tipped by a Reuters poll of analysts and up from $3.133 trillion in February.
The yuan rose 0.86% against the dollar in March, while the dollar fell 2.3% against a basket of other major currencies.
China held 66.50 million fine troy ounces of gold at the end of March, up from 65.92 million at end-February.
The value of China's gold reserves rose to $131.65 billion at the end of March from $120.28 billion at end-February.
(Reporting by Joe Cash and Albee Zhang; editing by Sam Holmes and Jason Neely)
