The lack of forest resources, wood quality, and some structural problems, are issues that on the short term can't be fundamentally solved by the Chinese government. Faced with an insufficient forestry development, China's huge wood demand, driven by the country's economic and social evolution, cannot be satisfied by domestic resources and will have to rely more and more on imports.

By 2017, China will push forward its Natural Forest Protection Program and phase out all commercial logging in natural forests. A logging ban is already active in some of the country's key regions, especially in three northeastern provinces. It seems that the ban will be extended to all state-owned forests next year, and logging on privately owned land will be ceased by the end of 2017.

These bans will reduce logging output by 50 million cubic meters per year.

At the moment, China has 198 million hectares of natural forests, of which 127 million hectares have been put under the administration of reservations since the launch of the forest protection program in 1998.