China Expected to Face Timber Shortage
Copyright 2000 Asia Pulse
December 22, 2000
FUZHOU, Dec 22 - The shortfall of timber in China will be bigger in the coming years, said Li Xiaobin, vice-chairman of the China Association of Timber Distribution, at a recent international timber and forest products fair held in Fuzhou, capital city of east China's Fujian Province.
Li made the conclusion based on China's present limited resources of forests for logging and reduction of timber production.
China now has forest areas totaling 137.7 million hectares, and growing stock of forests is 10.13 billion cubic meters, ranking fifth in the world after Russia, Brazil, Canada and the United States.
But, the country is placed in the back in term of per capita consumption of timber, which is 0.22 cubic meters in average, far behind the 1.16 cubic meters in developed countries. For forestry structure, China has limited resources of grown-up woods of about 110 million cubic meters a year, accounting for 26% of the standing stock.
The actual volume of grown-up woods for logging is less than 100 million cubic meters, of which more than 70% are small-diameter woods.
At present, China's supply of timber is divided into two parts.
One is timber under the national planned production, and the second is timber by denudation flowing into the market.
Since 1997, China has started a forest protection program to reduce logging by 5 million cubic meters annually.
The timber output was reduced to 63.95 million cubic meters in 1997 and is expected to further down to 47 million cubic meters in 2000.
At the same time, the country has strengthened efforts in the fight against denudation of forests, which is estimated at about 30 million cubic meters.
With the development of economy and improvement of people's life, the consumption of timber and timber products will rise rapidly in the coming years.
Since 1981, China's consumption of timber has maintained an average annual increase of 4%.
The consumption was 75.60 million cubic meters in 1981 and further up to about 143 million cubic meters in 1999.
The consumption of timber mainly comes from three sectors. They are the construction and retrofitting sector, furniture production and papermaking.
The consumption by the construction and retrofitting sector was 30 million cubic meters a year, accounting for 20.8% of the total; the furniture manufacturing, 24 million cubic meters, accounting for 16.7% of the total; and the paper making, 52.50 million cubic meters, accounting for 37.2%; agriculture, 20 million cubic meters, 13.9%; and industry and other sectors, 16.50 million cubic meters, accounting for 11.5%.
China now ranks second in the consumption of artificial boards, paper pulp, paper and paperboards, and third in the consumption of log.
However, the country's present production of 80 million cubic meters of timber is a far cry of the domestic demand, posing a shortage of more than 60 million cubic meters. The market consumption of timber is expected to reach 240 million cubic meters in 2010, 99 million cubic meters more than that in 1999 or rising 70%.
Of them, the consumption by construction and retrofitting is estimated to be 63.50 million cubic meters, surging 110%; that by furniture production, 91 million cubic meters; agriculture, 25 million cubic meters, up 25%; industry and other sectors, 20.50 million cubic meters, up 24%.
However, the domestic production of timber is now far from the future market demand either in quantity or in quality. Li predicted that the country needs at least 50 years to overcome the shortage.
In addition to stepping up the work of tree planting and adopting various measures to save timber, the most important and practical method is to import.