When the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was established in 1949, the central government established a series of principles for forestry development, including protecting forest, especially in mountainous regions, promoting afforestation and forest cultivation, and reasonable use and harvesting of timber. A Forestry Ministry was established, including 4 departments (forest administration, forest use, forest management, afforestation) and a general office. The ministry initiated forest logging management policies, issued logging guidelines and formulated requirements on logging practices. Due to the demand on timber for economic development, China’s forestry chose timber production as its main task. No less than 136 state-owned forest bureaus were gradually set up to harvest timber to fuel the economy in regions with large tracts of natural forests, including Heilongjiang, Jilin, and eastern Inner Mongolia in the northeast;
Yunnan, western Sichuan, and eastern Tibet in the southwest; and in parts of Xinjiang in the northwest and Hainan in the south (Xu et al., 2006a).
According to the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) experiences on forestry development, independent afforestation and forest industry departments were set up in each forest region to counterbalance each other. However, the conflicts between these two departments made it difficult to cooperate. In the end, afforestation and forest industry departments were merged together into forestry bureaus. As a result, the forest industry branch had more power in deciding timber logging, and the afforestation branch became a subordinate in the new organization. Besides forest logging, the central government also developed forestry production plan management systems, corresponding to its economic planning system. In this system the state arranged the infrastructure in forest regions, distributed funding and equipment, made production plans for forestry bureaus, redistributed timber and forest products, and decided on the use of all forestry capital and profits (Lei, 2007). Because the forest industry worked as an enterprise, it tended to increase timber harvesting without taking into account the sustainability of forest resources. In addition, the central government formulated policies on timber trading, in order to control timber trade. In state-owned forest regions, forestry departments directly managed their timber trade. In southern collective forest regions, forest industrial bureaus were built to monopolize timber trade.
In 1955, the Temporary Arrangement on Timber Redistribution Nationwide was carried out. All timber from China’s southern collective forest regions was monopolized by the government and private timber trade was reconstructed under socialistic principles. In timber trading, governments decided on the type, amount and price of wood. This policy eliminated timber pricing mechanisms, cut off the connection between forest owners and the market, discouraged investment on forestry, and resulted in overcutting for short term benefit (Lei, 2007).
During the land reform from 1950 to 1952, the government confiscated forestland from large landlords and redistributed it to local farmers. Afterwards, the government started a collectivization movement on private land, which reorganized farmers’ forest lands in the hands of village cooperative organizations. Collective forest tenure was established and has still existed as the main ownership structure in China’s rural areas until recent collective forest tenure reform (CFTR).
From 1956 to 1965, China endured a range of political movements and natural disasters (Three Years of Natural Disaster, Great Leap Forward, and People’s Commune Movement). These zealous political movements, especially the Making Steel and Building Canteen movement, brought a vast damage to forest resources nationwide (Shapiro, 2001). Although the Rules of Forest Protection was issued in 1963 to emphasize afforestation and forest protection, it had not been implemented effectively due to the political upheaval. From 1966 onwards, China entered into a ten year political upheaval, the Cultural Revolution. The whole system of forest management was broken down.
State-owned forestry enterprises (SOFEs) and public facilities were decentralized to provincial or lower levels. Provincial forestry departments were closed or degraded as a subordinate of local revolutionary committees. Forest management entered into chaos and one of its previous basic principles – emphasizing on afforestation – was replaced by “food as the priority”. Large forests were cleared for planting food crops, cash crops and cotton. Private forests, regarded as “the tail of capitalism”, were confiscated and handed over to collectives. The Cultural Revolution movement disordered regular forestry activities and abolished forest management institutions and technical guidelines (State Forestry Administration, 1999).
3. China’s forest policies 55
After the Cultural Revolution, forest management quickly recovered following the new era of post 1978 market-based reform and opening up policy. Forest management institutions and organizations were rebuilt. A Forestry Ministry was set up in 1979 and a new department – the department of forest resource management – was established to become responsible for afforestation planning, resources survey, and statistics. In South China’s collective forest areas, forest administrative organizations at county and township levels were also set up, including local forest public security, prosecutors and courts, township forestry stations, and timber check points. In 1979, the State Council issued the Notice on Protecting Forest and Forbidding Illegal Logging, which stipulated important items about maintaining forest ownership, forbidding illegal logging, stopping clearing forests, and strengthening timber market management. The Standing Committee of National People’s Congress recognized the Forest Law (trial), which clarified the main principles for forestry development, including taking afforestation as a main task, and strengthening afforestation and forest management. In 1981, the Central Committee of CCP and the State Council issued the Decision on Several Issues on Protecting Forest and Developing Forestry, which put forward that “forest ownership should be stable, ziliushan (private forest plots) should be demarcated clearly, and forestry production responsibility system should be established” (Central Committee of Chinese Communist Party and Chinese State Council, 1981). Subsequently, each province issued forest tenure certificates and distributed collective forests to farmer households as ziliushan or zerenshan (collective forest plots under private management). The new institutional arrangement on forest property rights encouraged farmers to invest in forestry. Furthermore, in 1985, the Central Committee issued Ten Policies on further Promoting Rural Economy, which abolished the governmental monopoly on timber trade and allowed free trade of private or collective timber on the market. However, further loosening the control on forest resources intrigued overcutting and illegal logging nationwide. So in 1987, the Central Committee issued the Order on Strengthening Forest Resources Management in South China’s Collective Forest Areas and Prohibiting Illegal and Over-cutting, which stipulated that for major counties with timber production, forestry departments continued their monopoly on timber trade in order to prevent illegal and overcutting. After the Order was implemented, provincial governments announced local forest laws and regulations to regulate forest management. The local forest management law system was formed in this stage (State Forestry Administration, 1999).
In 1985, a new Forest Law was published, which strictly controlled forest logging and stipulated that consumption on timber forests should be lower than natural growth. In the same year, the Forestry Ministry issued Temporary Regulation on Making Forest Logging Quota and it regulated detailed procedures for implementing logging quotas. In 1987, the State Council forwarded the Forest Ministry’s Examination Report on Annual Forest Logging Quota for Each Province. Its implementation embodied the principle of sustainable development in forestry and meant that China’s forest management transformed from timber production plan to forest logging quota.
In the same period, the central government also started to use ecological projects to promote reforestation. Since the start of the Shelterbelt Program in Three-North Area in 1978, the government initiated 17 forestry-related ecological conservation projects, including the Shelterbelt Program along the Upper and Middle Reaches of Yangtze River, Coastal Shelterbelt Program, Sandification Control Program, Greening Taihang Mountain Program, Greening Plain Program and so on (Zhou, 2001). In addition, 30 million RMB were invested annually by the State for
developing timber plantation bases. Local governments also promoted ecological conservation initiatives. For example, Guangdong Province made a decision on speeding afforestation and greening the entire province. After 1985, 12 provinces made similar commitments and completed the greening of barren mountains within their jurisdiction (Lei, 2007). In 1990, the State Council issued the Afforestation and Greening Outline from 1989 to 2000, which clarified guiding principles, objectives, planning, tasks and priorities in afforestation nationwide and promoted afforestation and greening of barren mountains in provinces. However, in this period, timber production was still the core business of forestry development in China. The management system, institutions and ideas from planned economy period were still overwhelming in China’s forest management.
From 1998 onwards, China’s forest management entered into a new phase: a historical transformation from timber production to ecological conservation (Zhou, 2002). The 15th Conference of the Central Committee of CCP took afforestation, soil erosion control and anti- desertification as important national strategies facing the new century. In 1999, the State Council issued the National Ecological and Environmental Development Outline, which stressed that ecological needs became the priority of forestry development. Two important policies on forest management and protection were initiated. The first was the six forestry ecological conservation projects, which invested tremendous funds into forest protection and ecosystem restoration (see Section 3.5). The other was forest ecological compensation policy, by which the principle of PES was built into China’s forest management.