Beware the 鈥淢ade in China鈥� label on that new table or patio chair. Those words could be a synonym for 鈥渋llicit goods鈥�. Washington-based think tank Forest Trends says China is now the 鈥渨ood workshop of the world鈥�, and the largest importer of illegally cut timber from tropical rainforests. The US and the UK are its two biggest markets.
鈥淔ew consumers realise that the cheap prices they pay for furniture are directly linked to the exploitation of some of the poorest people on Earth and the destruction of their forests,鈥� says Andy White, lead author of the report.
The report says that since the late 1990s, China has stopped logging its own dwindling natural forests and started plundering the forests of Papua New Guinea, Burma, Liberia and Indonesia, where 80 per cent of logging is reckoned to be illegal. If logging continues at the same rate in Papua New Guinea all its natural rainforests will be gone by 2020.
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While demand for wood is rising in China itself, two-thirds of imported timber is subsequently exported. China now supplies 30 per cent of the global trade in furniture. Since 1998, US imports of Chinese timber products have increased tenfold, and those in the European Union eightfold, with the UK leading the way.
