[PEN-L:260] Logging ban in China

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

September 27, 1998

Stunned by Floods, China Hastens Logging Curbs

By ERIK ECKHOLM

LIXIAN, China -- The trucks are still rumbling through the mountains here,
laden with big logs carved from the jagged slopes of western Sichuan.

But by the end of October, the trucks now crowding these winding roads will
be idle as the timber trade that was the lifeblood of a vast region of
western China, abutting the Tibetan plateau, comes to a halt.

Stunned by this summer's devastating floods along the Yangtze River, which
experts said were intensified because slopes far upstream had been stripped
bare, China has banned cutting of the old-growth forests that once formed a
rich green carpet over these mountains. No trees were to be cut after Sept.
1, and all logs must be trucked to timber yards by Oct. 31.

After a half-century of rampant clear-cutting, China's decision to save the
remaining forests along the upper reaches of the Yangtze and other major
rivers represents a dramatic shift in priorities in favor of environmental
protection. Huge tree-planting campaigns have also been promised.

But the change is certain to be wrenching for hundreds of thousands of
people in Sichuan, Yunnan and Gansu provinces, including large numbers of
ethnic Tibetans and other minorities, who have built their lives around the
logging trade.

"I feel this policy will probably benefit future generations," said Luo
Erwu, who was driving a load of logs out of the mountains the other day.

"But this generation will have to suffer," added Luo, an ethnic Tibetan who
still owes thousands of dollars on the logging truck he bought two years ago.

Far up a mountain gorge outside Lixian, where trees felled this summer are
still being dragged out, 53-year-old Wang Qunggan brewed tea over a wood
fire.

"We'll be putting down our axes and picking up our spades," said Wang, a
worried employee of the state-owned logging company that has cleared much
of the surrounding county.

Actually, what Wang has put down is not his ax but a pair of scissors.

For 27 years, the Western Sichuan Logging Company, which once had thousands
of workers, kept Wang as a full-time barber. Now he finds himself on
hillsides planting seedlings. But at least he still has a job and a promise
of a small pension when he retires in two years.

Not everyone in the region is so lucky. The thousands of former farmers or
workers who scraped together as much as $10,000, a small fortune here, to
buy logging trucks are chief among the casualties.

"No forest, no money," another private trucker, Gu Yuefu, said with a shrug
as he idled in a traffic backup caused by a small landslide. Since he
bought his truck last year for $10,000, Gu has been able to earn about $300
a month hauling logs from around his home of Aba, in the far western
mountains of Sichuan, down to Chengdu, the provincial capital.

Now he is deep in debt: no one wants to buy a logging truck and he does not
know what he will do. "Maybe I'll just sit around drinking tea," he said.

Other truckers and timber workers who expect to lose their jobs said they
would have to return to farming. In this densely populated, land-short
region this may only worsen another serious cause of erosion and silting of
rivers: the widespread farming of steep mountain slopes.

Abrupt as it seemed this fall, the logging ban was only a bow to the
inevitable, a hastened end to a classic pattern of boom and bust.

At midcentury, about 20 percent of the land in the mountainous western
parts of Sichuan, Yunnan and Gansu was covered with dense, primary forest,
said Shen Guofang, a professor at the Beijing Forestry University, in a
recent interview. Now, between logging and the spread of farming, the share
of land in forest has been reduced to 10 percent, he said, and much of that
consists of slowly recovering second-growth or plantations that do less to
conserve soil and water.

Peng Huangshi, deputy director of forestry for Sichuan, said that "the
timber resources have been approaching complete exhaustion" in the
province, with marketable trees increasingly inaccessible. Many logging
concerns have been running in the red, with the government forced to make
up the losses.

About two years ago, concerned about the financial and ecological costs,
national and provincial officials drew up plans to phase out most logging
in Sichuan and restore the landscape, Shen and provincial officials said.

But last year, national planning officials said there was not enough money
to proceed, Shen said. Money would be needed to support displaced forest
workers and pay retirees, to subsidize local governments dependent on
logging revenues and to pay for tree-planting and other new projects.

"The flooding this year pushed the government at last to implement this
plan," Shen said.

The bulk of the logging has been by large state-owned companies, although
towns and even private farmers have increasingly been involved, sometimes
logging illegally in protected zones.

With accessible timber increasingly scarce, the more than 20 large,
state-owned companies in the region were on a financial treadmill, with
mounting losses. Not only were costs rising while production fell, but the
older companies were saddled with the pension and health costs of workers
from the glory days.

The large state logging companies in Sichuan alone now have 45,000 active
employees, but are responsible for the pensions of 65,000 retirees,
officials said.

The Western Sichuan company, where Wang, the former barber, works, is a
case in point. In the mid-1960s, it was producing 1,560,000 cubic feet of
wood each year and had a few thousand workers. Last year, it was able to
cut only 106,000 cubic feet. By the time of this month's ban, its staff was
down to 462 -- including many working in reforestation or hydropower
projects rather than logging -- and the company must support 2,353 retirees.

Not surprisingly, the company has been losing money for 20 years.

Wang recalled conditions when he started working here in 1971, when big
trees were plentiful and near. "Back then, when we'd have a meeting, they'd
have all sorts of food laid out for us," he said. "We were receiving
bonuses all the time."

Several workers for the company said it often falls behind in paying their
wages, which for many are only $36 a month. Some said they had not been
paid since June.

To aid the transition from a logging economy, the central government has
promised Sichuan $121 million a year in aid, provincial officials said,
while the province will come up with an extra $24 million to help its
western region.

Productively employing all 45,000 state forestry workers in Sichuan will
itself be a challenge. Shen said that reforestation requires only one-third
the work force of logging. Local officials also dream of promoting
eco-tourism in the remaining pristine areas.

Forestry officials in Beijing say that nationwide -- logging is also being
curbed in China's northeast and in the upper reaches of the Yellow River --
at least 241,000 state timber workers will be laid off.

Tens of thousands more affected people, not officially state workers, have
not been promised government aid. Many were hired by the state companies as
"temporary" employees, with no benefits. Thousands more in township-run
companies or in private enterprise, like the dismayed truckers on the road,
depended on logging for their livings.

Small businesses in towns along the roads, too, will feel the pinch. As he
patched a threadbare tire in a grungy storefront here in Lixian, a man who
gave his name as Li said that 80 percent of his work involved repairing
logging-truck tires. "Our income will fall for sure," he said.

Asked whether the sudden, blanket ban on felling primary forest might be
unnecessarily traumatic, Shen, the forestry professor, said: "Given Chinese
reality, there are just too many people involved, and if you tried a
gradual approach you couldn't stop the logging. So it must be done very
clearly and strictly this way.".

After one or two years, he said, officials can consider whether to allow
selective, less-damaging logging methods in some areas. And some wood
production from second-growth forests and older plantations will continue.

Sichuan officials are putting a brave face on the situation, perhaps
because they accept that the era of easy timber money was already gone.

"We believe that whatever problems the logging ban creates can be
overcome," said Zhang Zhongwei, the deputy governor of Sichuan, in an
interview. "It's for the good of future generations."

Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company




Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)