For many years China has suffered from an acute shortage of forest resources. According to the most recent data, based on a nationwide inventory completed in 1981, China has 115,277,000 hectares of forested land. This ranks China sixth in the world in total forest area, but in relation to China's large surface area and enormous population the resource is small. Only 12 percent of the country's surface area is forested, barely half the global average of 22 percent. China has only 0.12 hectares of forested land per capita, just 18.5 percent of the worldwide average of 0.65 hectares. Table 5.1 shows that timber inventories and reserves are equally scarce. China has 10.26 billion cubic meters of reserves (only 9.03 billion if marginal stands are excluded), an average of only 10 cubic meters per capita, or 15 percent of the global average (Table 5.1).

China's paucity of forest resources has hampered the country's economic progress, forcing industry to use substitutes or simply to do without. The country's paper and paperboard production, for example, falls well short of demand despite rising output and suffers from poor quality because three-quarters of domestic output is not based on wood pulp. Industry is subject to stringent guidelines, codified and strengthened in 1983, to minimize wood used in construction, public utilities, transportation, mining, furniture manufacturing, packaging, and other sectors, in favor of brick, concrete, plastics, and other substitutes (Regulations for Economic and Rational Application 1983).

One response to the shortage of forest products has been an increase in imports to over 9 million cubic meters a year in 1985 (Table 5.2).