With limited domestic forest resources, China continues to be a major importer of forest products in order to meet its growing domestic demand for logs, lumber, chips, pulp and paper. In 2017, import volumes of both softwood logs and softwood lumber reached all-time highs despite a slowing activities in the house construction sector. Over the past ten years, the total importation of softwood logs and softwood lumber has gone up 3.5 times in roundwood equivalents (RWE), according to the Wood Resource Quarterly (WRQ).
Today, China is the world’s largest importer of logs and the second largest importer of lumber after the US. However, over the past two years imports of lumber has grown much faster than that of logs, with lumber import volumes in 2017 surpassing log import volumes by 36% (in RWE).
In the last five years, lumber shipments from Russia have doubled. As a general trend, Chinese imports from North America decline, while those from Europe increase. The greatest change on the log side is that Australia almost tripled their shipments in this period to 4.2 million m3.
