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

Abstract

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.

Impact of logging on aboveground biomass stocks in lowland rain forest, Papua New Guinea

“…Additionally, overestimation of annual allowable extraction volumes creates pressure to meet the annual target not only by increasing the annual logged area, but by intensifying logging or by premature second harvests in logged-over forest. This may partly explain why the average life of an active concession in PNG has been closer to 11 years, rather than 35 years (Katsigris et al 2004, Shearman et al 2008. The overestimation of merchantable volume in Makapa was not principally caused by inadequacies in the Forest Inventory Mapping System (Hammermaster and Saunders 1995) used by the management authority, as this provides a comparable estimate to actual harvest data.…”

Timber export taxes and trade between Russia and China: Development of the forestry sector in the Russian Far East

“…Interestingly though, the Chinese are placing stipulations on these processing facilities that require the hiring of Chinese labor, even though the facilities themselves are located in Russia. Katsigris et al (2004) identify specific enterprises that are fully staffed by Chinese labor. Thus, it seems that China is capable of conceding that FDI in the Russian forestry sector is necessary for the security of its natural resource sector, but is unwilling to let Russia benefit fully from these investments.…”

“…Furthermore, Katsigris et al (2004) and Krkoska and Korniyenko (2008) conclude that many of the Chinesefinanced processing facilities are purchasing timber from illegal loggers. Krkoska and Korniyenko (2008) find that there are a "large number of Chinese entrepreneurs involved in illegal logging. "…”

What Happens When The Market Shifts To China ? The Gabon Timber And Thai Cassava Value Chains

“…There is compelling evidence that a significant (but unknown 8 ) share of Chinese log imports are "illegally sourced", 9 including from Gabon (EIA, 2005;ITTO, 2005;Stark and Cheung, 2006). It is widely argued that China is at the center of illegal log trade and processing (Global Timber, 2009;Katsigris et al, 2002;White et al, 2006). 10 Insofar as the Chinese market shows any distinctive preferences for wood products, consumers appear to like dark wood characteristics, as do Indian consumers.…”