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We developed a method to better estimate the carbon stocks of in-use harvested wood products (HWP) by using the Eora multiregional input–output tables to link global HWP production and end uses, compared to existing global-scale studies that focused on semifinished HWP. Using the new method, we allocated global HWP to country-specific end uses, including solid HWP used in (1) construction, (2) furniture production, and (3) other end uses, and as (4) household and sanitary paper and (5) other paper and paper products, while the HWP carbon stocks in these end uses were estimated using the Stock Change Approach. We reported that HWP produced globally contained an annual average of 277.7 teragram carbon in 1992–2015, of which 63.0, 12.6, 76.7, 9.1, and 116.3 teragram carbon were consumed by the above five end uses, respectively. By 2015, the carbon stocks of global in-use HWP produced since 1992 accumulated to 2938 teragrams of carbon, of which the above five HWP end uses accounted for 1489, 268, 890, 0, and 291 teragrams of carbon, respectively. Country-specific HWP production and consumption varied significantly, with the eight leading consuming countries (United States, China, Japan, Canada, Germany, Russia, United Kingdom, and France) accounting for 69% of the global in-use HWP carbon stocks.

The state of China's ecological environment has improved to some extent since the Chinese government initiated the Natural Forest Protection Programme (NFPP) in 1998. The logging prohibition and limitation policies adopted by the NFPP, however, have reduced domestic timber supply. Decreasing domestic timber supply, together with the thriving economy, continues to widen the gap between supply-and-demand. Importation is considered the primary solution to this issue, making China the world's largest timber importer. China's import origin structure indicates that its major timber suppliers are Russia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, and Gabon, among which Russia accounts for more than 61% of China's total timber imports. Data regarding imported timber categories show that the relatively cheaper conifers imported from Russia account for more than 60% of all imported timber, with volumes continually increasing because of the rapid pace at which China has been implementing its infrastructure projects. Furthermore, as living standards continue to improve, requirements for home decor and furniture also grow, bringing about an increase in the demand for tropical to temperate timber. In the long term, import will remain the main solution to the insufficient domestic timber supply in China.

China's new round tenure reform has devolved collective forests to individuals on an egalitarian basis. To balance the equity-efficiency dilemma, forestland transfers are highly advocated by policymakers. However, the forestland rental market is still inactive after the reform. To examine the role of off-farm employment in forestland transfers, a simultaneous Tobit system of equations was employed to account for the endogeneity, interdependency, and censoring issues. Accordingly, the Nelson-Olson two-stage procedure, embedded with a multivariate Tobit estimator, was applied to a nationally representative dataset. The estimation results showed that off-farm employment plays a significantly negative role in forestland rent-in, at the 5% risk level. However, off-farm activities had no significant effect on forestland rent-out. Considering China's specific situation, a reasonable explanation is that households hold forestland as a crucial means of social security against the risk of unemployment. In both rent-in and rent-out equations, high transaction costs are one of the main obstacles impeding forestland transfer. A remarkable finding was that forestland transactions occurred with a statistically significant factor equalization effect, which would be helpful to adjust the mismatched labor-land ratio and improve the land-use efficiency.

Substituting harvested wood products (HWP) for greenhouse gas (GHG) intensive nonwood materials in long-lived end uses has the potential to significantly reduce GHG emissions. To determine the mitigation effects of HWP substitution, we produced China-specific wood displacement factors (DFs) by HWP end use subcategory, defined as tonnes of carbon (tC) of reduced emissions per tC contained by the HWP substituted for typical alternative nonwood materials. The weighted average DFs for substituting HWP for nonwood materials in construction and furniture production in China were estimated to be 3.48 tC/tC and 1.36 tC/tC, respectively, or 2.90 tC/tC for HWP substitution when these two sectors were combined. If annual solid HWP consumption in China increased by 10% on the basis of 2014 consumption (an increase of 25.9 million m 3 of HWP) and these HWP were used to substitute for GHG-intensive materials in construction and furniture production, 18.76 Mt C of emission reduction can be achieved annually. Substituting HWP for nonwood materials in construction appeared to be more effective than in furniture manufacture in mitigating GHG emissions. Our study suggested that increasing HWP use in China, especially in the construction industry to substitute for nonwood materials can significantly contribute to China's emission reduction targets.

Abstract:The trade of harvested wood products (HWPs) and their feedstock increasingly affects the dynamics of the complete national HWP carbon pool ignored by the Production Approach (PA), the current universal method, proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Existing research also overlooks the inherent factors that lead to the non-objectiveness of PA that affects the potential carbon trade and the sustainable use of forestry resources. This study aimed to investigate such inherent factors through a deductive derivation of PA and the Stock-Change Approach (SCA), based on which an empirical study on China was conducted to rethink the objectiveness of PA in the complete national HWP carbon pool. The deductive derivation indicated that the inherent factors rely on the balance between coefficients that describe the relationship between HWP trade and production and the relationship between the corresponding feedstock trade and production. The empirical study further illustrated that the dynamics of balance between coefficients negatively influence the objectiveness of PA. The absolute objectiveness of this approach was constantly weakened in the past 55 years and may potentially occur yet again in the future despite an improvement in its annual relative objectiveness.

State-owned forestry enterprises are important elements of the forestry economy in China. The operational efficiency of such enterprises depends on technological progress and other input factors. Total factor productivity (TFP) is an important means to evaluate the efficiency of technical elements. The growth of production efficiency can be classified into efficiency variation and technical variation. The TFP of 135 key state-owned forestry enterprises in the northeast, southwest, and northwest regions of China in 2001-2011 was measured through Malmquist-data envelopment analysis. The technological progress of the state-owned forestry enterprises positively affected TFP variation, but technical efficiency only slightly increased and scale efficiency even negatively affected TFP variation. The average growth rate of TFP in the northwest region is higher than those in the northeast and southwest regions. The Western Development Program of China increasingly contributes to the economic development of western areas. The increasing investment of the government in science and technology accelerates the development of forestry economy in China.