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Home / International Forestry Review, Volume 6, Numbers 3-4

Open Access The China Forest Products Trade: Overview of Asia-Pacific Supplying Countries, Impacts and Implications

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Over 70 % of China's timber product imports are supplied by countries in the Asia Pacific region, and China is the dominant forest product market for many of these countries. Unsustainable harvesting practices, illegal logging, and negative impacts on community livelihoods plague many of these supplying countries. The countries may be divided into those still harvesting and exporting timber from natural forests on a large scale and those which have gone past their highest levels of natural forest timber harvesting and are now more aggressively pursuing plantation development and processing. Apart from Russia, China's top Asia Pacific timber suppliers could at best maintain current supply, with natural forest resources being depleted in less than 20 years. Resource limits also constrain expansion and/or long-term continuation of processed product export to China. Greater attention and action on the part of governments, market leaders, and international organizations is needed to address negative impacts, shifting supply to a sustainable, legal, and equitable basis and to determine from where China's long-term supply will come.

Keywords: Asia Pacific; China; forest product exports; livelihoods; policy issues

Document Type: Research Article

Affiliations: 1: Forest Trends 1050 Potomac Street NW, Washington, DC 20007, USA. 2: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. 3: Policy and Market Analysis, Forest Trends 1050 Potomac Street NW, Washington, DC 20007, USA. 4: Forest and Governance, Center for International Forestry Research, P. O. Box 6596, JKPWB, Jakarta 10065, Indonesia. 5: Department of Geography, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. 6: Foundation for People and Community Development, P. O. Box 1119, Boroko NCD, Papua New Guinea. 7: The World Agroforestry Centre, Floor 3, Building A, Zhonghuandasha Yanjiadi 650034, Kunming-Yunnan, PR China. 8: Forest Information Systems, P. O. Box 3217, Boroko, NCD, Papua New Guinea. 9: Far Eastern Ecoregional Project, World Wide Fund for Nature 109240 Nikoloyamskaja st., Moscow, Russia. 10: Bureau for Regional Oriental Campaigns, Vladivostok, Russia. 11: Remote Sensing Center, University of Papua New Guinea, P. O. Box 320, University, NCD, Papua New Guinea. 12: Microeconomics Division, Economic Research Institute of the Far Eastern Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia. 13: World Agroforestry Centre, Floor 3, Building A, Zhonghuandasha Yanjiadi 650034, Kunming-Yunnan, PR China.

Publication date: 01 December 2004

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