According to the development trend of current international timber market and trade and China timber resources and economic development for the future, local experts think that China timber import and export trade in the coming years will have the following features:

(1) There are relative stable supply countries but trade data with different supply countries will be changed. Log imports will still focus on Russia, Malaysia, Gabon, Papua New Guinea, Myanmar, German and New Zealand. Russian timber dominates among imported timber.

(2) Imports of raw material products such as log and sawnwood will continue to increase at a larger rate. View from a long-term perspective, proportion of log will reduce and the proportion of sawnwood will enlarge.

(3) Imported price for log will be bullish generally. The price for Russian timber will increase at a larger rate.

(4) High grade timber imports will increase within many years but the growth rate of imports will increasingly reduce and finally imports will also reduce with the price for imported timber (especially tropical hardwood) increasing.

(5) The growth rate of softwood imports will be faster than that of hardwood and the proportion of softwood will be larger.

(6) The imports of plywood and veneer still reduce quickly. The plywood export will increase further. Currently China major supply countries of imported plywood are Indonesia and Malaysia and major supply countries of exported plywood focus on Japan, South Korea and some South East Asia countries. China will enlarge its plywood exports to the Occident (European and American countries).

(7) Paper pulp, paper products and waste paper will be mainly imported as timber products in future.

(8) Imports of timber new products and down stream products will grow. Imports of mechanical equipment for timber processing will increase. At the same time, export of downstream products will also increase.

(9) Timber operating profits will tend to be smaller. The competition of timber market will be strong and enterprise trade profits will be smaller in tandem with timber resources from many countries swarm into China.

(10) The competition in the field of timber downstream products trade will tend to be strong. Trade friction, non tariff trade barriers and anti-dumping will occur.