Mingxing Hu

China initiated a new collective forest tenure reform (CFTR) in 2003, which transferred the use rights of collective forest land and the ownership of collective trees to farmers. To assess the impact of the CFTR on timber production and to understand its underlying mechanisms, this study first conducted a theoretical analysis on how CFTR affects the production of commercial and non-commercial timber, leading to the provided hypotheses. Then, based on a panel dataset for 28 provinces from 1998 to 2018, a Time-varying Difference-in-Differences model was employed for empirical analysis. The results show that the CFTR led to an increase of 24.18% in commercial timber production and 34.37% in non-commercial timber production. The CFTR boosted the production of both types of timber initially, but the incremental effects were weakened over time. The incremental effects of the CFTR on commercial timber production was larger in regions with more collective forests. After the CFTR, the proportion of economic forest land in total forest land increased, contributing to a short-term rise in commercial timber production. In regions with higher timber market prices, reforms have a greater effect on increasing timber production, implying that farmers are more sensitive in their response to market values.

The purpose of this research is to study the changes in the market structure of China’s pulp and paper product imports. In particular, the import trade environment and market layout of Chinese pulp and paper products have changed under the international context of the coronavirus pandemic and the Sino-US trade dispute and the domestic policy context of zero imports of Chinese waste paper. This study attempts to fill the gap regarding the influencing factors of market structure, while contributing new ideas on China’s trade in pulp and paper products. Based on pulp and paper product import and export trade data from 2005 to 2021, a trade gravity model was used to explore the changes in the share of China’s trade partners for pulp and paper product imports and their influencing factors. The results indicated that the outbreak of COVID-19 led to a significant increase in China’s imports of packaging paper products, bringing about an increase in Indonesia’s status as a partner in China’s pulp and paper product trade. The US-China trade dispute had an impact on pulp and paper product trade between the two countries, with China’s tax countermeasures causing the US to lose its status as a trading partner in China for pulp and paper product imports. The center of gravity for paper product imports has moved from the US and Japan to Indonesia and Russia. The restrictions on waste paper imports have shifted the focus of China’s paper raw material imports, with the US no longer being the main importer of China’s paper raw materials. Specifically, the main importers of wood pulp are Brazil and Chile, while the main importers of waste paper pulp are Thailand and Malaysia. In the future, China needs to continuously strengthen dialogue with the United States to resolve trade disputes and create a favorable environment for trade in pulp and paper products. At the same time, China’s paper enterprises should strengthen the expansion of the Southeast Asian market and reduce dependence on the US market, and China should continue to improve the waste paper recycling system and improve the utilization rate of domestic waste paper.

The efficiency and productivity improvement are the core requirements of high-quality development, while improving the efficiency of forest carbon sinks is an important means and fundamental way to achieve their high-quality development. Based on the forests and socioeconomic development data of 31 provinces (cities and districts) in China from 2004 to 2018, the biomass method and DEA-Tobit panel regression model were used to analyze the level of forest carbon stock, carbon sink and carbon sink efficiency, and factors influencing forest carbon sink efficiency in China’s provinces. The results indicated that: ① nationwide forest carbon stocks and carbon sinks increased successively while carbon density decreased. The regions with higher carbon stock, carbon sink, and carbon density were concentrated in the northeast and southwest forest areas with abundant forest resources. ② During the 7th to 9th forest inventory, the efficiency of forest carbon sinks was on a low and decreasing trend. The mean values of comprehensive efficiency in general for the 7th to 9th forest inventory periods were 0.421 and 0.336, respectively. The scale efficiency in the decomposition efficiency was above 0.650 for both inventory periods, and gradually increased, showing that the gap between the actual scale and the optimal production scale of forestry carbon sink was decreasing. The pure technical efficiency level represented the production efficiency of input factors at the optimal scale of forestry carbon sinks. The mean values of the two periods are 0.639 and 0.514, respectively, while the differences within the production frontier surface are 0.361 and 0.486, which indicates that there is input redundancy or output deficiency in the two periods as a whole. ③ The total annual precipitation and the level of socioeconomic development have significant driving effects on the improvement of forest carbon sink efficiency, while the incidence of pests and diseases, abnormal changes in temperature, afforestation area and the development of population urbanization have significant inhibiting effects on the improvement of forest carbon sink efficiency in China.