Issues Associated With Management Of Publicly-owned Forest Resources In China

Although the total forest area is large, China has low forest coverage, management efficiency and timber resources per capita with worsening forest-dependent ecological and environmental conditions. Forest lands and wood resources were fully publicly owned for several decades. Private forest emerged about two decades ago, and has been dramatically increasing in the last few years. Yet, publicly-owned forest still accounts for most of the forestland and wood resources. The management of publicly-owned forest indicated the overall level and shortcomings in the country. The present study attempted to investigate the associated issues, and to develop the corresponding solutions through analyzing several advanced countries' management and development experiences, and development history, status and management characteristics of forest resources in China.Six typical countries' forest resources, management and development were reviewed, including public and private forests. Their successful forest management, preservation and development were based on the excellent enteprise system, policies and industrial environment. All of these countries adopted the principles of sustainable forest management and development, aiming at yield improvement, ecological and environment conservation and social development in the same time. By well investment of funds and application of technology, these countires developed and enriched their forest resources with specific management and development models. It was most notable that high-yield plantations played an important role in their forest resources development.China's public forest system has been experiencing three periods: fullypublicly-owned at early stage, absolute majority of publicly-owned with supplement of others at the beginning of the reform, and majority of publicly-owned with others as important component as well in the last decades. The ownship of forest resources is still under change. There are two types of publicly-owned forests: state-owned and collective. Due to different reasons, most of the state-owned forests have undersirable growth rate and yield with low values and ecological efficiency; collective forests lacked tending and protection; the overall forest resources was essentially not enough to meet the increasing demand of the quick economic development in the country. Different issues or inadaptabilities becomed visuable in the management of publicly-owned forests.With the current market economic, the existing forest ownship, forest policies and system of state-owned enterprises management become the source of many other factors limiting the management and development of forest resources in China. The poor execution and monitoring of forest policies such as classified forest management often degraded even spoiled the forest management and operation work of many enterprises or units. The models employed by many state enterprises may not be consistent with the principles of modern commercial management, either not workable or having unclear goals, no long-term plan and simple products. There was usually little investment put into collective forests. The tenure reform of the collective forestland twenty years ago created a lot of problems for this part's forest management and development at present and in the future. Most of the management units have small forest area, fragmented forestland, poor site condition, and limited flow-cash, resulting in no technology development and application, and low management efficiency. There were no widely accepted standards and criteria for evaluating the ecological, environmental and social values of different forests, nor the corresponding subsidiary mechanism to encourage the forest industry.Due to the described issues, the goal of sustainable management, i.e. improving wood yield with friendly environment and harmony social development, become unachievable. Most of the state-owned enterprises struggle to survive while the collective section is seen as a nature gift, no need to manage. The continuousinvestment of the country could increase the quanity but quality in the end. Guangdong province has excellent environmental conditions for forest growth, and could increase forest coverage to as high as more than 57% in a short period. However, its growth rate and standing volume are even lower than the national levels. This was a good case for exemplifying the issues or problems that are associated with the management of the publicly-owned forests.The corresponding solutions were recommended. The reform of forest rights, ownship and policies should be speeded up; the execution and monitoring of forest policies should be enhanced. The management and development of ecological forests should be well supported by the state or local revenues. For the section of commercial timber forest, state-owned enterprises should switch to joint-stock companies while collective forestland could mainly be managed by private companies. Two types of forest enterprises should enjoy the same benefits under the reformed forest policies. In the perspective of ownership structure, two types of companies would be allowed to freely develop under the market mechanism. It was suggested that the state and/or provincial governments establish favourable forest policies, standards and criteria for evaluating ecological and social values of forests, and the corresponding subsidiary mechanism, to stimulate the sound and quick development of forest resources in the country. Forest companies should increase their business scale, employ new technology, diversify products, and raise funds through commercial market to well place management and operation in position at different stages.