Dynamics of the Russia–China Forest Products Trade

Abstract

Relying primarily on English language scholarship, this paper seeks to highlight the dynamics of China's economic integration beyond its borders as Chinese economic actors extend their search for commodities-in this case into the Russian Federation for timber products. The paper considers the shifts in the political economy of Russian forestry exports from a predominantly domestic and Japan-focused trade during the 1947-1991 Cold War era to a north-south trajectory increasingly emphasizing trade with China from 1993 to 2010. Chinese and Russian bilateral trade data, acting as a barometer of national forestry-related policies, highlight the economic convergence and benefits brought to both the Russian and Chinese timber sectors over the past two decades. Far from being an environmentally deterministic processone based on the physical geographic characteristics on the ground in both of these states-this binational commodity trade shows that the geography of the Russia-China forest product trade is highly dynamic, temporally variable, and intimately intertwined with national political and economic considerations.

Dynamics of foreign trade of Saint-Petersburg and Leningrad region with the PRC in the context of "One belt - one road" megaproject

“…Investors are interested in real estate and retail. Among the largest projects are: residential area "Baltic Pearl" in the south-west of the city 6 ; the Russian-Chinese business park on Vasilievsky Island; the Russian-Chinese cultural center of the Hua Ren group of companies with the Nihao hotel at Tallinskaya street, worth over 1.17 billion rubles 7 ; the Russian-Chinese Congress and Exhibition Center "Druzhba" worth 36 billion rubles. Several chains of Chinese restaurants operate in the city: Tan Zhen (9 restaurants), Mi Fan (1 restaurant), Nihao (2 restaurants), Ditai (1 restaurant), Ali (1 restaurant), Green Tea (1 restaurant), Zao Wang (3 restaurants) and others (5 restaurants).…”

“…But still, generally, modern researchers consider the mutual foreign trade of two countries in a broader context, often within the geopolitical paradigm [9]. It should be noted that some researchers in their studies are limited to only one commodity group in the foreign trade of Russia and China [7].…”

Mechanism and Prediction of China-Russia Timber Trade from the Perspective of Sustainable Development

“…Sponsored by the Russian government and the academic circle, many Russian scholars have explored the state and sustainability of China-Russia timber trade [13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. China began to investigate China-Russia timber trade in the early 1990s, as state-owned forestry enterprises encountered a severe lack of forest resources.…”

Assessing the impact of China's timber industry on Congo Basin land use change

“…High US consumption rates and natural resources dependence on other countries has increased consumers’ attention on the local/regional environmental impacts of global supply chains (Kissinger & Rees, ; Yu et al., ). More recently, China's role as a major processing hub of globally sourced primary products (Yu et al., ), especially of timber products (Laurance, ; Narins, ), has gained importance in light of the environmental knock‐on effects associated with wooden furniture production (see e.g., Kamps, ). While wood products exports (in the form of furniture) from China to the USA illustrate just one example of the broader trend of growing bilateral trade between the Chinese and the US economies, it represents the increasingly prevalent trend of telecoupling (socioeconomic and environmental interactions across distance, see e.g., Liu, ) in a complex world.…”