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People's Republic of China, Former Minister of Education, Madam ZiLi Chen's visit to FABI. |
Forestry represents one of the most important industrial sectors in South Africa (SA) and in the People's Republic of China (PRC). In South Africa, the Forestry Industry is based on commercially managed plantations of non-native tree species such as those of Pine, Eucalypts and Acacias. These plantations cover in excess of 1.5 million hectares and industry is one of the most important sources of export capital and employment. In contrast, Forestry in China is mainly concerned with the management of natural forest. Here, forests cover 18.2% of the total land area, with more than 170 million hectares of forest. Of this, 69% is regarded as natural forest, and 31% is represented by plantations.
Native forest ecosystems in China have been strictly protected from logging since 2000. For this reason Eucalypt plantations have been established to meet the needs of the rapidly growing national economy. At the present time, in excess of 1.7 million hectares of Eucalypt trees have been planted in South China, especially in the provinces of GuangXi, GuangDong, HaiNan, FuJian, and Yunnan. Moreover, the company Asian Paper and Pulping (APP) has established one of the first pulp mills supplying approximately 1 million tons of pulp P/A in the HaiNan province. Two additional pulp mills with similar production capacity are in the process of being constructed in GuangDong and GuangXi and these should come on line in 2007. There is no doubt that there will be a substantial increase in Eucalyptus planting in China to meet the growing paper and pulp needs of the future.