China protects own timber while smuggling rare woods

By TIM JOHNSON

Knight Ridder Newspapers


NANXUN, China - China‘s voracious appetite for timber is threatening
exotic
forests as far away as Brazil, West Africa, Indonesia and Russia‘s Far
East.

Much of the timber bound for Chinese sawmills comes from countries
where
illegal logging is rampant. Environmental groups are sounding an alarm,
saying the trade in illegal timber fosters corruption and encourages
the
devastation of some of the globe‘s most fragile regions.

In a report last month, one watchdog group described China as "the
largest
buyer of stolen timber in the world."

The British-based Environmental Investigation Agency said it had
uncovered
"the world‘s biggest timber smuggling racket" - a route controlled by
crime
syndicates that send some 20 shiploads a month of exotic hardwood logs
from
Indonesia to China.

The issue reaches all the way to U.S. retail showrooms, where cheap
Chinese
bedroom furniture has made dramatic inroads. In November, the Bush
administration slapped tariffs on China, charging that wooden furniture
is
being "dumped" below cost on the U.S. market.

While many U.S. consumers don‘t bother to ask - or don‘t care - about
the
source of wood products, ecology experts say rampant illegal logging is
having a dramatic impact on places such as Indonesia, site of the last
big
undisturbed forest wilderness in the Asia-Pacific region. The logging
destroys habitat for myriad species, including some that are facing
extinction and exposes local people to landslides and floods.

China‘s timber imports were relatively modest in 1998, when devastating
floods along the Yangtze River killed some 2,500 people. Experts blamed
the
floods on deforestation. As a result, China banned logging in natural
forests. It turned to foreign timber, removing tariffs and promoting
wood-processing industries.

Since then, Chinese imports of logs, semi-processed wood and forest
products
have nearly tripled, turning small cities such as Nanxun in coastal
Zhejiang
province into export hubs with a global reach.

Jiang Miaogen, a section chief with the Zhejiang Province Office for
Industry and Commerce, smiled as he described the emergence of 370
private
factories to make wood flooring in Nanxun, a canal port 60 miles west
of
Shanghai.

"All these companies have developed very rapidly over the last three to
five
years," Jiang said.

Chinese officials insist that timber coming into the country is checked
by
customs officials to make certain it‘s legal. They add that
timber-exporting
countries should take responsibility for safeguarding their forests.

"They are better suited to monitor the situation than the Chinese
government. China doesn‘t have any instrument to take action," said Xu
Jintao, a scholar at the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, a part
of
the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Several environmentalists said China‘s laws are routinely flouted.

"At the policy level, they always say, `We will try to step up efforts
to
tackle smuggling.‘ But actually there is such a huge need for timber.
The
local customs officials keep one eye open and one eye closed," said Wen
Bo,
a Beijing-based expert with Pacific Environment, a U.S. advocacy group.

Some experts say China is a part of a lengthy chain in which illegal
logs
are "laundered" on the way to market. Once hewn, the logs are
transported on
the high seas and given forged papers, processed in China, then
exported to
Western markets or purchased by Chinese consumers.

In its Feb. 17 report, the Environmental Investigation Agency estimated
that
44 percent of China‘s timber imports are illegal. Other watchdog groups
have
said that between a third and a half of China‘s timber imports were
logged
illegally.

The U.S. timber industry, often at odds with environmentalists, agrees
that
the problem is serious.

"China‘s sources for hardwood log imports reads like a `Who‘s Who‘ of
countries with problems with illegal logging," says a report issued in
November for the American Forest & Paper Association, a U.S. trade
group.

The report estimated that 50 percent of China‘s hardwood log imports
from
Russia and West Africa "may be considered to be of `suspicious‘ or
illegal
origin."

China is now the world‘s second biggest importer of logs. Its main
timber
suppliers are Russia, Malaysia and Indonesia, although Papua New
Guinea,
Gabon, Burma, Cambodia, New Zealand and Brazil are also important. Many
of
those countries face social conflicts over logging and land use.
China‘s
timber contracts with Burma give its military regime an economic
lifeline.

The Environmental Investigation Agency report said logging theft from
Indonesia "is being organized by powerful syndicates of brokers and
fixers"
that can gin up phony documents for shipment to China.

Most of the illegal timber is merbau, a luxurious and valuable
hardwood,
taken from Indonesia‘s Papua province to China, said Julian Newman, a
researcher for the group. He said Indonesia‘s military is deeply
involved in
illegal logging in Papua.

"There‘s still forest in the uplands, but it is being stripped away
quickly," he said in a telephone interview from Jakarta.

Indonesia banned the export of merbau logs in 2001, but illegal
shipments
have increased even faster than the once-legal ones, the EIA report
said.

Piles of Indonesian merbau logs sat at wharves in Nanxun one recent
day.

Merbau wood flooring, manufactured in China, is widely available in the
United States, and Chinese producers say Western buyers rarely ask
about the
origin of wood.

"Our clients are concerned about the type and quality of wood that is
used.
But nobody has ever asked us if the source of the wood is legal or
illegal,"
said Zhang Enjiu, the president of Jiusheng Flooring Co., one of
China‘s
largest wood flooring manufacturers.

Showrooms around Nanxun display exotic floorings, such as teak and
cherry
from Burma, mahogany from Brazil, iroko from West Africa, and
Indonesian
merbau.

China‘s timber binge also sates rising domestic demand, spurred by a
housing
and home renovation boom.

Even as China uses more timber, its own forests are protected by the
logging
ban.

Indeed, an aggressive tree-planting campaign has helped forest coverage
grow
from 16.2 percent in 1997 to 18 percent in 2003. The goal is to reach
20
percent by 2010.

"A lot of countries criticize China‘s logging ban for transferring the
ecological crisis to other countries," said Lu Zhi, country director in
China for Conservation International, a U.S.-based group trying to
protect
the world‘s biodiversity hotspots.

As long as hardwood supplies last, factory owners say they‘ll pursue
global
market share.

Fresh from a convention in Las Vegas, Zhang marveled at strong demand
in the
United States, convinced that his Jiusheng Flooring company can boost
sales.

"Production costs in China are relatively low," Zhang said. "There is
no
country that can really compete."

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