From IFR Special Issue: Understanding the Chinese forest market and its global implications (Editorial)
By Jintao Xu, Andy White - Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Forest Trends View PublicationChina’s forest market is one of the largest in the world in terms of production, consumption, and imports of wood products. Its large forest estate and massive population has meant that it has also for some time been a leading nation in terms of the number of processing plants, number of people employed in the forestry sector, the scope of its non-timber forest markets, and the overall level of contributions of forest enterprises and markets to local livelihoods. However, despite
this importance the exact nature of China’s forest
market has long been a mystery to the outside world, as well as to most Chinese. Until recently there has been limited interest, or capacity, to seek a more detailed picture but this has changed in the last few years with China’s booming forest imports and rapidly expanding domestic market.