State of the art of the Chinese forestry, wood industry and its markets

This paper reviews the development of the Chinese wood products development in the last 10 years, besides offering an overview about its forestry and specific export and import markets for the commodities, encompassing sawn wood and wood-based components. In the last decades, China’s forestry and wood industry encountered an accelerated development. This progress resulted in China’s emergence as the largest player not only in the global wooden raw materials, but also in the wood products market, and has become the largest exporter of value-added wood products. Since 2000, China has introduced modern industrial equipment for the forest products manufacturing and consolidated its trade marketing. It is likewise the largest importer of unprocessed or semi-processed soft-, hard- and tropical wood species. Moreover, China itself developed over the past 10 years into the largest importer of logs worldwide, a position traditionally held by the USA. Its imports are decreasing nowadays due to increasing restrictions imposed on wood exports by other countries. The national consumption of wood-based panel products in China increased steadily due to the higher purchasing power that determined a quick development of the furniture, flooring and construction industry. China is the largest producer of medium density fiberboard/high density fiberboard, plywood and particleboard, as well as container floors and wooden pallets; furthermore, one of the world’s largest user and especially important producer of pellets. China has been the leading exporter of wooden furniture since 2004, overtaking the traditional European exporters.