China Targets $2 Trillion Forestry Economy in New Five-Year Plan

Beijing has fixed its 2030 targets at 25.8 per cent forest cover and 22.4 billion cubic metres of standing timber, with nine major programs covering 165 endangered species, the sixth phase of the Three-North shelterbelt, and a drive to raise the share of timber China grows itself.

Forested slopes rise beneath broken cloud, with China's new five-year plan setting national forest cover at 25.8 per cent by 2030, up from 25.09 per cent at the end of 2025. (Photo Credit: Avagyanlevon / Dreamstime)

China has set its forests and grasslands a 2030 target of 14 trillion yuan (US$2 trillion) in annual output, 25.8 per cent forest cover, and 22.4 billion cubic metres of standing timber, in a five-year plan made public on Wednesday. That is according to the state news agency Xinhua, which reports that the National Forestry and Grassland Administration issued the plan jointly with the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Natural Resources.

The targets climb from a 2025 baseline, with forest cover at 25.09 per cent at the end of last year, standing timber at 20.99 billion cubic metres, and the industry’s output near 11 trillion yuan. The plan sets the rise at 0.71 percentage points of cover, 1.4 billion cubic metres of standing volume, and more than 3 trillion yuan of output within five years.

Nine major programs carry out the delivery, led by the sixth phase of the Three-North shelterbelt, which takes on 20 million hectares of construction and consolidation work across China’s arid north. Alongside it sit a national greening task of more than 6.6 million hectares, a forest quality program managing at least the same area again, and new national parks established in sequence.

“We are using remote sensing, artificial intelligence, and big data,” Zhang Huaiqing, chief scientist at the Chinese Academy of Forestry, said of desertification control, which he says has moved from planting vegetation to restoring whole regions, speaking in March as the national outline fixed the same 25.8 per cent goal.

Inside the Three-North program area itself, the national outline puts combined forest and grass cover at 40.9 per cent by 2030, with 67 per cent of treatable sandified land brought under treatment and vegetation cover on sandified ground reaching 22 per cent.

Two further programs cover fire and wildlife, with annual forest fire damage capped at below 0.7 per thousand, grassland fire damage capped at below 1.8 per thousand, and 165 critically endangered plants and animals placed under emergency rescue and early-warning monitoring. A separate action plan covers migratory bird flyways that cross Chinese territory.

Timber supply carries the plan’s sharpest signal for exporters, with the industry task directing national reserve forests toward higher quality and a rising timber self-sufficiency rate. Imported logs already face a market where demand for unprocessed timber has been in structural decline, with New Zealand radiata pine supplying more than half the logs processed at Chinese ports.

The plan also leans hard on technology, days after the administration credited science with 62 per cent of the sector’s gains and put robot dogs and drone-launching fire trucks on show on state television, a week after its Changsha science conference set a matching 65 per cent target for 2030. For exporters, the plan points in one direction: China lifting sector output to 14 trillion yuan by 2030 while raising its timber self-sufficiency rate and cutting reliance on imported logs.

Source: https://woodcentral.com.au/china-forestry-five-year-plan/