China's Timber Market and Sawmill Industry: Imports, Processing and What It Means for European Sawmills

Why China still matters to every sawmill that exports

China is the world's most important destination for traded wood raw material, and in the last five years it has also shown how fast a market can swing. In 2021 it took record volumes of softwood logs and lumber. By 2025 both flows had shrunk sharply, housing was in a prolonged slump, and Russia had consolidated its position as the dominant lumber supplier. For European sawmills, China was briefly a large outlet for logs and sawn timber, and it is also the market that sets the price floor for Russian and Belarusian wood, which competes with European production elsewhere.

This is a country profile synthesised from open sources: official and intergovernmental publications where reachable, and labelled trade press where not. Every figure carries a year, unit and source; "provisional" marks partial-year data; "own calculation" marks derived approximations. China Customs, Trade Data Monitor and UN Comtrade figures differ because of product definitions and reporting dates, so series from different datasets below are not strictly comparable.

China's import position at a glance

Two product flows dominate China's imports of wood raw material for sawmilling and panel production: roundwood (logs) and sawn timber (lumber). The two have behaved very differently since 2021.

Softwood logs peaked in 2021 and have roughly halved since. Softwood lumber also peaked earlier, with Fastmarkets, citing Trade Data Monitor, reporting that imports from all foreign suppliers fell 23% in 2021 compared with 2020, implying roughly 25 million m³ in 2020 (derived by the source's own arithmetic, not directly reported). A trade-press report on the 2025 numbers describes 2025 volume as about half the 2019 peak, though the underlying data source for that claim is not named.

Source: Timber Online (22 Jan 2025 and 29 Dec 2025), Fastmarkets (16 Mar 2023), Tree Frog Forestry News / Lesprom Network (4 Feb 2026). The lumber series mixes two datasets (Trade Data Monitor for 2021-2022, China Customs for 2024, an unnamed source for 2025) and should be read as a direction of travel, not as an exact time series. Own calculation: 14.6 million m³ in 2025 is about 24% below the 19.2 million m³ of 2021.

One more own calculation helps with the missing year. If 2024 imports of 16.6 million m³ were 8% lower than in 2023, as Timber Online reports, then 2023 was approximately 18 million m³. That is a back-calculation from a rounded percentage and is flagged as approximate.

The picture is therefore a market that lost about a quarter of its lumber volume and nearly half of its softwood log volume in four years, while still remaining the largest single importer in the world for these products.

Logs: who supplied China, and how the mix changed

New Zealand dominates

The most important feature of the softwood log market is the concentration on New Zealand. Timber Online reported, citing China Customs, that New Zealand supplied 17.8 million m³ in 2024 (down 1%), out of a total of 26.1 million m³. For January to November 2025 the same publication reported 16.7 million m³ from New Zealand out of 22.1 million m³ in total, a 76% share, up 8 percentage points. Other 2024 suppliers were Japan (1.64 million m³), the USA (1.27 million m³) and Canada (1.15 million m³, up 24%).

Own calculation: New Zealand's 2024 share of 17.8 of 26.1 million m³ is about 68%. The jump to 76% in 2025 is partly the result of European suppliers shrinking, not of New Zealand growing: its volume rose only 3% in the period.

Russia: from log supplier to lumber supplier

Russia was once a large source of logs to China, but the trend has been downward for years. A New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade market report from July 2021 states that Russia exported 15 million m³ of logs in 2020 (12% of global trade), roughly 80% of it to Finland and China, and that China sourced about 10% of its log imports from Russia in 2020. China had been reducing reliance on Russian logs since Russia's first export tariffs in 2007, according to the same report.

The policy sequence from that report is as follows. In May 2021 Russia approved interim export duties effective 1 July 2021 for roughly processed timber with moisture above 22%: conifers 10% (minimum EUR 13 per m³, previously no duty), oak 10% (minimum EUR 15 per m³), beech 10% (minimum EUR 50 per m³, previously EUR 10) and ash 10% (minimum EUR 50 per m³, previously EUR 12). The report also records that a general ban on round log exports was planned for 1 January 2022, with a state-owned company to hold monopoly export rights.

The USDA Foreign Agricultural Service's China Solid Wood Products Annual (2023) confirms the end result: Russia's ban on log exports covers softwood and some high-value hardwoods, including ash, maple, oak and beech. The same report says China's hardwood log imports fell 10% and softwood log imports fell 38% in 2022. The exact legal text, exemptions and later amendments were not verified in this research and are listed under limits.

The consequence is clear in the lumber data. Russia now supplies the processed form of the same resource, and it does so in large volumes, as shown below.

Europe: a short and sharp log boom

European logs are the most dramatic story in the series, and the one that matters most for a European reader. Timber Online reports, citing China Customs and its own database, that the EU supplied 16.3 million m³ of softwood logs to China in 2021, nearly one third of China's total of 49.7 million m³ (own calculation: 32.8%). By 2017 the EU share had been only 2.2%. By 2024 the EU supplied 3.23 million m³, or 12% of the total. Germany alone was around 11.7 million m³ in 2021, nearly a quarter of the total; in 2024 it was slightly over 1 million m³, 4% of the total and 69% below 2023.

The usual explanation is the Central European bark beetle calamity, which pushed salvage spruce onto the market; the sources reviewed do not quantify this link, so it is an interpretation.

The retreat continues. For January to November 2025 Timber Online reports (provisional, China Customs) Germany at 369,000 m³ (down 61%) and Poland at 336,000 m³ (down 63%), while Latvia rose 71% to 494,000 m³ and Bosnia and Herzegovina nearly doubled to 137,000 m³.

Hardwood logs: oak and the US

For European hardwood the key product is oak. EUWID, reporting trade data, put China's oak roundwood imports at 817,095 m³ in 2023, down 37% from 1.31 million m³ in 2022; the 2021 figure was 1.35 million m³. France was the largest supplier with 304,051 m³ in 2023, down 45% from 553,119 m³ in 2022. The underlying statistical source was not named in the text we could read.

United States hardwood logs have also collapsed. A September 2026 trade-press article (ScrapMonster, crediting Wood Central and USDA data) reports that China's imports of US hardwood logs fell from 969,761 m³ in 2024 to 274,645 m³ in 2025. That article is a news report on tariff negotiations, and these figures were not verified against USDA directly.

Tropical logs

ITTO's Biennial Review 2023-2024 (launched 20 October 2025) says world tropical log imports were 10.2 million m³ in 2024, the lowest in its 34-year records, and names China's property contraction as a dampener. It gives no China-specific tropical figure.

Sawn softwood: Russia dominates, Europe is second

The lumber market is where China's demand most directly overlaps with European sawmill capacity.

Annual breakdown, 2022 and 2024

For 2022, Fastmarkets reported (Trade Data Monitor) that Russia supplied 11.9 million m³ (down 8%), Canada 1.3 million m³ (down 20%) and the USA 105,640 m³ (down 45%), out of 17.3 million m³ in total. Market shares were Russia 69%, Europe 18% and North America 8%.

For 2024, Timber Online reported from China Customs the following:

Source: Timber Online, 22 Jan 2025, citing China Customs Statistics. The country volumes in the article add up to roughly 17.2 million m³, above the stated 16.6 million m³ total (own calculation), so the individual numbers are rounded or defined differently from the total. Treat them as approximate. EU-27 share of total imports fell 4 percentage points to 18%.

Own calculation from these figures: Russia's 2024 share is 11.3 of 16.6 million m³, about 68%. The EU's implied 2023 figure, if 3.0 million m³ was "around a quarter less", is about 4.0 million m³, which would make 2023 the peak year for European lumber in this period. For 2022, taking the 18% share of 17.3 million m³ gives about 3.1 million m³. This is a back-calculation and not a published figure.

2025

The 2025 picture, as reported by Lesprom Network (republished by Tree Frog Forestry News on 4 February 2026), is 14.6 million m³ imported, down 12%, worth USD 3,002 million (down 11%) at an average of USD 206 per m³. Russia held a 70% share, with Canada and Belarus each at 8%. Own calculation: a 70% share of 14.6 million m³ is about 10.2 million m³ from Russia, a decline of roughly 10% against 2024's 11.3 million m³, though the sources are different. The article does not name its underlying statistical source; we label it trade press.

The ISC 2025 conference in Oslo (22-23 October 2025), reported by Timber Online on 12 November 2025, also gave Russia's share as about 70% and said this "dictates low price levels" in China. The report said there was no sign of a short-term recovery and that improvement would depend on government stimulus, not before 2027 at the earliest. The speakers for those statements were not named in the article.

The Dovetail Partners summary of the November 2025 UNECE COFFI session says 66% of Russia's softwood lumber exports went to China (year not stated, context 2024).

European sawn softwood exports to China, 2019-2024 and 2025

A precise six-year annual series for European sawn softwood to China was not available from open sources reachable in this research. Eurostat's Statistics Explained page on wood products does not break out exports to China (it lists the Comext datasets for_rptp and for_rpts as the place to get them), and UN Comtrade was not queried directly. What follows is therefore a patchwork, with every point carrying its own source.

Sources as named in the table. The 2019 and 2020 rows are four-month figures only; no full-year 2019 or 2020 European volume was verified. Share-based rows are own calculations from percentages and should not be quoted as reported volumes. Different datasets are used in different rows.

Reading across, three conclusions are defensible. First, the EU volume was in the order of 3 to 4 million m³ a year in 2021-2024, with 2023 possibly the high point. Second, the 2024 fall of around 25% was concentrated in Sweden (-48%), Germany (-38%) and Finland (-29%), the three largest named exporters. Third, by the first half of 2025 China was only 2.2% of EU sawn softwood exports to non-EU markets by value, which means that for the industry as a whole the market is now of modest size, even if individual mills with Asian specialisation still depend on it.

The same EOS presentation (via Fastmarkets) puts EOS-country sawmill production at about 78 million m³ per year, stable since 2023 and 10% below the 2021 peak of 86 million m³ (association figures).

Hardwood and US-China trade

US hardwood lumber was China's largest supplier from 2014 to 2018, with about a 30% share, according to the September 2026 trade-press article cited above, and Thailand took first place in 2019. The National Hardwood Lumber Association (NHLA), in an article by an American Hardwood Export Council manager dated 1 August 2025, reports that through May 2025 US hardwood lumber exports to China were down 18% in value and 23% in volume year on year, that red oak exports to China were down 38% from their 2018 peak, and that China's total hardwood lumber imports fell 9% in 2025 (period as stated in the article, which was published in August). The NHLA is a trade association and the article is promotional in places, so the figures are labelled trade-association data.

The tariff background is important. USDA FAS recorded in early 2021 that China extended Section 301 retaliatory-tariff exclusions on five hardwood tariff lines through 16 September 2021; without the extension, additional tariffs of 20 to 25% would have returned. Those five categories accounted for USD 824 million of US exports to China in 2020. The NHLA article describes a June 2025 framework that would cut the tariff on US products entering China from 125% to 10%, and the tariff on Chinese products entering the US from 145% to 30%; it is described as a framework, not a final agreement. Most recently, ScrapMonster (28 September 2026, trade press) reports that the US and China each recommended USD 30 billion of "non-sensitive" goods for favourable tariff treatment after a September 2026 state visit, with logs and wood products on the US list; final rates and timing were undecided.

Domestic forest resource and plantations

China's domestic forest is large and growing, but it does not supply enough of the right kind of wood.

The National Forestry and Grassland Administration (NFGA) of China, in a statement by its Vice Administrator to the 26th FAO Committee on Forestry on 3 October 2022, gave the latest national statistics as follows: forest area 230 million hectares, forest coverage 24.02%, growing stock 19.49 billion m³, and 87 million hectares of planted forest (described in the statement as the preserved area of planted forests). The statement does not give a reference year for those figures.

The EU-funded Timber Trade Portal cites the FAO Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025 for about 227 million hectares of forest in China and forest cover of 25.09% in 2025, with annual net forest gain of about 1,690 thousand hectares per year in 2015-2025. We were unable to open the FAO assessment directly, so these FRA-based numbers are second-hand. The same portal cites the National Forest Resources Inventory 2014-2018 for 94.67 million hectares of production forest and states that commercial harvesting of natural forests has been banned since 2017, and that plantation timber from species such as Cunninghamia lanceolata (Chinese fir), poplar, eucalyptus and pines (Pinus massoniana, Pinus elliottii) is the backbone of domestic supply. The portal also says that over half of the country's processing-grade timber is imported, giving no year or volume. We treat that as an unquantified statement.

Two consequences follow: domestic wood is mostly fast-growing plantation material that does not substitute well for high-grade spruce, pine and fir, and the natural-forest harvest ban makes imports structural, not cyclical.

Processing industry structure and regional hubs

Verification of regional hubs was partial. What can be stated from sources reachable here:

An ITTO Biennial Review 2015-2016 chapter on the plywood industry in China (using China Statistical Yearbook of Forestry 2015 and State Forestry Administration data) names Linyi in Shandong and Pizhou in Jiangsu as plywood clusters where mills specialise in veneer, plywood or overlaid plywood, and describes Guangxi, the country's largest forestry province, as a new plywood cluster since 2008. The main plywood clusters are in the eastern and southern coastal provinces. The chapter does not mention Caoxian or Zhangjiagang, and it contains no sawnwood production figures.

More recent data, from the Academy of Industry Development and Planning under the NFGA and the China Forestry Products Industry Association as reported by ITTO and trade press, show that:

• plywood: more than 7,400 manufacturers in 2023, down about 30% year on year, with capacity of 205 million m³ (a slight decline), and Guangxi overtaking Shandong in plywood capacity for the first time (figures not available in the article we read);
• fibreboard: more than 278 manufacturers at the end of 2023, down 19%, capacity of 46 million m³ (down 4%), with Shandong the largest producing province at 6.4 million m³ and Guangxi at 5.9 million m³ (about 13% of national capacity).

Statements that Caoxian is a wood-products centre or that Zhangjiagang and Taicang in Jiangsu are timber import hubs are widely repeated in the trade, but could not be confirmed from an open official or intergovernmental source here, so they are not presented as facts.

Domestic sawnwood output was not verified from FAO production data, so no figure is given; mill counts for the sawmilling sector were also not verified.

Panels and engineered wood

China is a panel-producing superpower. The ITTO plywood chapter reports plywood production of 165.5 million m³ in 2015, up from 9.9 million m³ in 2000 and 109.8 million m³ in 2012, and blockboard of 20.8 million m³ in 2015 (all from Chinese statistics cited by ITTO; note that the "plywood" definition used in Chinese statistics may be broader than in international statistics, which we did not verify). The 2023 capacity of 205 million m³ for plywood and 46 million m³ for fibreboard indicates a sector designed for much higher throughput than the market now absorbs.

Fibreboard exports were 2.205 million tonnes in 2023, worth USD 1.194 billion (volume up 10%, value down 0.5% against 2022), with Mexico, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia the top destinations, according to the ITTO bulletin reported by Wood Based Panels.

Wooden furniture is a major downstream user of sawn timber and panels. ITTO's Biennial Review states that China accounted for 27% of world exports of wooden furniture and parts in 2024. The ISC 2025 report adds that US tariffs on furniture weigh on China's furniture industry and reduce demand for high-quality sawn timber. This is relevant to European hardwood and high-grade softwood exporters: demand for premium timber depends on export-oriented furniture, not just on domestic construction.

No volume or production figures for cross-laminated timber or glulam were found in open sources reachable here, so no market-size claim is made.

Housing and construction cycle, 2021-2026

Chinese wood demand is closely tied to property. The National Bureau of Statistics reported on 19 January 2026 (as republished by a brokerage news service; we did not open the NBS release itself) that for full-year 2025 real estate development investment was RMB 8,278.8 billion, down 17.2%; construction area of developers was 6,598.9 million m², down 10.0%; and sales area of newly built commercial housing was 881.01 million m², down 8.7%. The Lesprom Network report gives the same 881 million m² sales area and says it is 37% below the five-year average and 41% below the ten-year average, that new home prices fell 2.4% year on year in December 2025 and that housing starts in December were down 19% year on year. These are trade-press statements with the original statistics office source not named.

For 2021 through 2024 we did not retrieve official annual property statistics in this research. The wood trade data nonetheless trace the cycle. The wood trade data trace the cycle: the 2021 peak (49.7 million m³ of logs, 19.2 million m³ of lumber) was followed by declines in each later year in the sources cited. The USDA FAS annual report for 2023 attributes the weak 2022 import numbers to slower economic growth, a weakened housing sector, changing consumer preferences and lower overseas demand. ITTO attributes weak tropical log demand to the property contraction. The ISC 2025 report cited 65 to 80 million vacant apartments, a figure we could not trace to a primary source and which should be treated as a trade-press estimate.

On the evidence of the 2025 statements, a quick return to 2021 levels is unlikely.

Tariffs, sanctions and phytosanitary rules for European timber

Import duties

We did not obtain an official Chinese tariff schedule for softwood logs or sawn timber, so no most-favoured-nation duty rate is stated; check the current schedule with a customs broker. None of the sources reviewed describes a Chinese retaliatory tariff on European sawn timber; the retaliatory tariffs discussed above are specific to the United States.

Phytosanitary requirements

The most concrete regulatory requirement for European exporters is China's rule on pine wood. The General Administration of Customs of China issued Announcement No. 110 of 2021 on 20 December 2021, titled "Phytosanitary Requirements for Pine Wood from Countries with Pine Wood Nematode Presence", effective 1 February 2022 (USDA FAS summary). The Canadian Food Inspection Agency notice explains the content: the target pest is the pine wood nematode (Bursaphelenchus xylophilus); the rules cover Pinus spp. from Canada, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Portugal, Spain and the United States. Logs need pre-export sampling and laboratory testing, then methyl bromide fumigation if the nematode is not found. Lumber needs heat treatment to a core temperature of 56 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes, shown on the phytosanitary certificate. Entry is limited to designated ports in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Shandong and Guangdong, and non-compliant shipments can be destroyed or returned.

For European exporters, the listing of Portugal and Spain is the relevant point. The CFIA summary is a Canadian document, not the Chinese text, so exporters of any species should confirm current Chinese requirements, including country-specific protocols, with their national plant protection organisation. We did not verify European-specific protocols.

Sanctions and trade measures on the European side

For Belarus, the European Commission's Access2Markets page records that Council Regulation (EU) 2022/355 of 2 March 2022 amended Regulation (EC) No 765/2006 to ban imports into the EU of wood products classified under HS chapter 44 originating in or exported from Belarus. Belarus is nonetheless an increasing supplier to China (about 1.2 million m³ in 2024, up 29%). The EU measures on Russian wood were not verified in this research and are not described here.

The significance is indirect: EU bans on Belarusian (and, per general knowledge not verified here, Russian) wood diverted flows eastward, which plausibly strengthened the Russian position in China and lowered the price level European sawmills face there. No source reviewed quantifies this.

Research output in wood processing

China has a deep wood-science research base. Two institutions can be named on the basis of verified evidence. A 2021 paper in the open-access journal BioResources (volume 16, issue 3, pages 5187-5202), "Performance Evaluation of a Novel Cross-laminated Timber Made from Flattened Bamboo and Wood Lumber", lists authors from Southeast University, Jiangsu Vocational College of Agriculture and Forestry, the Ningbo Sino-Canada Low Carbon New Technology Institute, Nanjing Forestry University, the Chinese Academy of Forestry and Southwest Forestry University. The paper reports that a bamboo-core, hemlock-face cross-laminated timber had axial compressive strength nearly equal to hemlock CLT but a higher compression modulus, and that no rolling shear failure was observed. This shows the direction of Chinese applied research: using bamboo and plantation species to extend engineered wood products, rather than relying only on imported softwood.

We could not open the institutions' own English websites (access was blocked), so no organisational detail or bibliometric claim is made. Chinese work on bamboo composites and engineered products may affect product substitution in the long run, but this article cannot quantify it.

Outlook statements by institutions and the trade

The institutional outlook for China is cautious. What was verifiable:

• The UNECE and FAO Committee on Forests and the Forest Industry (COFFI) forecast for 2025-2026 exists as a publication (UN iLibrary, publication date April 2026), but we could only open its front matter and not the China-related analysis. We therefore do not quote it. The Dovetail Partners summary of the November 2025 COFFI session, titled "The only certainty is uncertainty!", notes that economic forecasts pointed to slower growth in main wood consuming countries, China among them, for 2025-2026.
• At ISC 2025 in Oslo, as reported by Timber Online, the expectation for China was no short-term recovery, with improvement dependent on government stimulus and not before 2027 at the earliest. For Europe, the report said no significant improvement until mid-2026 and a slight recovery in the second half of 2026. The speakers behind these statements were not identified in the article, so we treat them as conference commentary.
• ResourceWise (consultancy blog, promoting a paid report) said import volumes in China dropped notably in 2025 as demand waned; it gives no China forecast.
• ITTO's 2023-2024 Biennial Review links weak tropical log import demand to China's property contraction.

No source reviewed forecast a return to the 2021 level. Our latest hard data are for 2025 (and H1 2025 for Europe-specific exports), so the 2026 picture rests on commentary, not completed-year statistics.

What it means for European sawmills

The following are our own interpretations of the evidence above and are not statements of the sources.

First, China is no longer a growth market for European sawn softwood; it is a residual and price-sensitive outlet. With Russia at roughly 70% of lumber imports and logs concentrated in New Zealand, European volume is a marginal supplier that can be priced out quickly. The first half of 2025 value of EUR 85 million, down 37%, and the share of 2.2% of non-EU exports show how thin the margin has become.

Second, the 2021 log boom was an exceptional event linked to Europe's salvage harvest, not a template: volumes fell from 16.3 million m³ in 2021 to 3.23 million m³ in 2024, and mills that relied on cheap salvage logs for Chinese export must now compete for regional log supply again.

Third, the main commercial risk is Chinese demand and Russian price, not Chinese tariffs. Niche exporters (high-grade oak, ash, kiln-dried furniture stock) are less exposed to the Russian benchmark but more exposed to the furniture export cycle and US-China tariff arrangements.

Fourth, compliance matters: the pine wood nematode rules affect pine from Portugal and Spain directly, and the 2027 horizon quoted at ISC is the earliest date for improvement, so a base case of flat to low volumes is more consistent with the evidence.

Sources used

All sources are listed in the structured source list that accompanies this article (30 entries: intergovernmental and official pages, trade press and one open-access paper).

Limits of this article

• Open-source only. Several primary sources (FAO FRA 2025 country report, FAOSTAT, UN Comtrade, Eurostat Comext, the full UNECE/FAO Forest Products Annual Market Review, later USDA GAIN editions) could not be opened or queried, so many figures are second-hand through trade press and labelled as such.
• Mixed datasets (China Customs, Trade Data Monitor, unnamed sources) are not strictly comparable. Own calculations are approximations from rounded percentages. January-November 2025 log data and H1 2025 European export value are provisional.
• European exports to China 2019-2024 are a patchwork, not a clean annual series; 2019 and 2020 are four-month figures.
• Not verified: Russia's log export ban legal text and amendments; Chinese MFN duties on European softwood; EU measures on Russian wood; Chinese domestic sawnwood production; Caoxian, Zhangjiagang and Taicang as hubs; CLT and glulam market size; European-specific phytosanitary protocols; annual Chinese property statistics for 2021-2024; the 65-80 million vacant apartments claim; the China analysis in the COFFI forecast.
• Trade-press, association and consultancy claims are labelled and were not checked against customs data. Institutions are named only from one paper's affiliations.
• Interpretation sections, including the bark beetle link and the implications for European sawmills, are the author's reading, not statements of the cited sources.