The imports & exports of China’s forest products in the first half of this year were tighter than last year, with a decrease of 18.73% of log imports and big negative growth in the exports of wood-based panel as well. Although the trade was not optimistic, China’s GDP was registered a forceful growth such as the sales of commercial houses kept growth in successive eight months which enabled huge developing space for its wood manufacturing industry.

1. Imports of forest products
Logs---as a result of negative growth of the exports of forest products, the demand as well as imports of logs decreased sharply. It is reported that China’s imports of logs reduced 7.52 million m3 in last year, and this year continued this negative influence, with 13.29 million m3 of log imports in the first half dropping 18.37% over last year, which was 6.7 million m3 less than 2007. Among the imports of this year, 7.68 million m3 was from Russia, which was 2.92 million m3 less than last year, dropping 27.57%. Because Russia increased its export tax, China was forced to seek alternatives, like New Zealand has exported 1.87 million m3 of logs to China in the first half of this year, increasing by 156% over last year; lumber was 4. 07 million m3, increasing by 21.31%.

Other forest products---as a result of exports decrease of wooden furniture, the demand for fiberboard also reduced. More important is that China has seen a big improvement of its fiberboard in quality, its domestic market can meet the end by itself, so the imports of plywood also decreased a lot in recent years. According to the statistics that China imported 43244t and 76573m3 of fiberboard and plywood respectively in the first half this year, dropping 73.81% and 51.91% over last year. On the other hand, as the demand for particle board in furniture production increased, the imports of particle board reached 103930t in the first half increasing by 30.65%. While the demand by high-grade furniture decreased slightly, with a total import value of solid wood furniture of $ 118.5 million dropping 2.27% over last year.   

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