Night and day, the timber ships reach this Yangtze River port, one of the world's busiest clearinghouses for logs from every corner of the globe: Southeast Asia, the Amazon, Russia, the Congo.
Soon, this wood will be yours.
It will be your hardwood floor and your coffee table, your bedroom dresser and your plywood -- all stamped with the most successful label of our time: Made in China.
In less than a decade, China has transformed the global timber trade, importing more wood each year than any country in history and quadrupling the amount of wood products it ships around the globe.
And no one is consuming more of it than Americans. U.S. shoppers have become the world's best customers of low-cost Chinese flooring, furniture and plywood, buying 10 times as much as a decade ago.
But that profitable embrace comes at a steep, hidden cost: The demand for cheap Chinese goods is driving destructive logging around the world, threatening livelihoods and dividing fragile nations.
Nearly three decades into its unprecedented economic ascent, China is outstripping its own resources and roaming the planet for more. Its hunt for timber is driven by a voracious hunger for everything from wood to cashmere to oil.
That hunger has wrought damage within its borders and beyond.
To grasp how a rising superpower's appetites shape the world, consider a single log from this port at Zhangjiagang. Buried among thousands of others, it has nothing to set it apart except a number emblazoned on a tiny green tag: 11008.
In those five digits lies the story of where the log began, a coded map to a distant outpost of China's commercial empire. It points south from the flourishing coast of southern China, across 3,000 miles of the Pacific to Papua New Guinea, one of the world's most troubled and spectacular countries, which nearly abandoned logging until China came along.
Digit by digit, the map leads over the mountains and glaciers to the nation's remote northwest province, Sandaun, where millions in timber profits and payments have left children without shoes and schools without plumbing.
The numeric trail ends at a specific patch of Papua New Guinea's forest. And in that forest lies a village where the torn landscape of logging has left a tribal leader unsure where to hunt for food and fearful for the future.
A gold mine of timber
Jim Sumo, a short, muscular 34-year-old clan leader, spotted the muddy track carved by a bulldozer and strode into the jungle.
The midday sun bore through the foliage, and insects droned overhead. He was headed to see another tree cut down near his home, the village of Sumumini. He passed a dozen logs lying in a row, ready to be trucked down the rutted road to Vanimo harbor, where a trio of 330-foot timber ships waited in the brilliant blue water.
Sumo reached a clearing where a pencil cedar, straight as a bell tower, soared from the forest floor. A chain-saw operator was revving his battered orange-and-white Stihl. He carved two thick wedges from the trunk and stepped away. The tree listed and cracked, crashing through vines and brush and thundering to the ground.
Sun poured into the hole. For an instant, the jungle was library-silent. Sumo turned and trudged back through the mud, seething.
He walked through a gold mine of wood. On all sides were some of the world's most expensive trees--smooth, hard tropical species tinged with exotic reds and yellows, some hundreds of years old and coveted by loggers, manufacturers and retailers.
With names like kwila and mersawa and garo garo, the trees were destined to become condo floors, back-yard furniture and squash courts, the backdrop of an unimaginably different world.
The forest through which he walked cradled other treasure as well: one of the planet's single richest stores of biodiversity, an abundance that led Charles Darwin contemporary Alfred Russel Wallace to say of New Guinea that "If we look round the whole circumference of the globe, we shall be unable to find a region . . . so promising to the naturalist." Scientists have identified species on the island as recently as December 2005, including 20 varieties of frogs.
Such tropical rain forests cover barely 6 percent of the planet but hold 50 percent of all the known organisms on Earth. Half of the world's tropical forests have been felled already, leaving researchers to speculate how many species are going extinct before they are discovered.
That prospect makes New Guinea even more of a treasure in the lucrative world of biomedical research. Tropical forests hold unique value for researchers who rely on new genetic ingredients for cures and vaccines. By one count, no less than 40 percent of all prescriptions written in the U.S. are for drugs derived from plants, animals and microorganisms.
Loggers in Papua New Guinea are cutting so fast that experts calculate that the rest of its accessible forests will be cut down within 16 years.
"Those are some of the finest remaining forests in the tropical world," said American biologist Bruce Beehler, who has made more than 40 research trips to New Guinea.
"If you take just 1 hectare [2 1/2 acres] of it, it probably has thousands of species living there--plants, animals and other life-forms--that haven't been described by science. So we don't even know what's in that box that is being meddled with."
Winding along the muddy trail, Sumo the tribal leader had more urgent concerns. He wanted to know why it was getting harder to find food in the forest, why his people still live in another era.
"We're being used," he said bitterly as the chain saw roared again in the distance. "They've made millions in this area."
The freshly cut tree would be tagged with the same forest code as the log at the Chinese port: 11008.
`An appalling deal'
There may be no better place to hear the echoes of China's rise than Papua New Guinea, whose local timber industry is booming. It sends four out of every five logs to China.
Less than a decade ago, the industry was headed for ruin--until something thousands of miles away changed the course of the island nation's natural history.
In the summer of 1998, massive floods struck the Yangtze and other Chinese rivers, leaving thousands dead and 14 million people homeless. Chinese authorities blamed aggressive logging for eroding the soil and exacerbating the floods.
With the sweeping power afforded a one-party authoritarian state, China banned logging on vast sections of the rivers, slashed tariffs to attract foreign logs and turned in part to Papua New Guinea.
Since that moment, its timber exports to China have soared more than tenfold. Though the exports accounted for just 6.5 percent of China's log imports in 2005, they meant everything to its tiny trade partner. In effect, China salvaged the logging business in Papua New Guinea.
"If you took China out of the industry now, we wouldn't be sitting here," said timber spokesman Bob Tate.
Papua New Guinea spreads east from Indonesia across half the rugged island of New Guinea. This year it crossed an astounding milestone, leaping past big Asian and African timber producers to become China's largest supplier of tropical logs.
Behind that surge is a timber industry with unequaled power in local politics and business, strong enough to keep cutting trees despite mounting criticism from citizens, government and international organizations.
Regulators describe a logging system in crisis. Hundreds of pages of Papua New Guinea government audits, ordered by the World Bank from 2000 to 2005, document widespread illegal and unsustainable logging, a monitoring system "fatally damaged" by budget cuts and cronyism, and "few lasting benefits" to the villagers who sell their trees.
Foreign donors and customers have begun to recoil. The World Bank canceled a conservation deal last year that would have delivered more than $30 million in loans. British timber traders recently issued a rare advisory to avoid products made of Papua New Guinea wood.
Around the world, more consumers are beginning to ask where their wood comes from, pressuring retailers to sell products certified as being from responsible sources.
British conservation groups, for instance, persuaded lawmakers to ban illegal wood from all government contracts. Illegal logging takes many forms: flat-out theft, evasion of taxes and fees, and violation of national labor and environmental laws.
Americans have been slower to realize the extent of the problem. U.S. law does not ban the sale of most illegal wood. Environmentalism has never been as popular in the U.S. as in Europe, and U.S. demand remains low for environmentally certified products.
That may be changing. Just as sweatshops and "conflict diamonds" posed an ethical challenge for U.S. retailers in the past--forcing many to improve their practices--China's traffic of illegal wood tests the environmental pledges of U.S. retailers.
The pressure to clamp down on illegal timber has reached Papua New Guinea, where industry executives and political allies defend logging. They call it an economic lifeline that employs more than 9,000 people, contributes up to 6 percent of tax revenue and provides more than $20 million a year in payments to landowners. Tate, the industry spokesman, said regulators' criticisms bear "no relationship to reality."
But critics accuse timber companies of exploiting a nation unequipped to police itself in a race to feed world demand before Papua New Guinea's supply is exhausted.
"When we look at the issue in a global sense, you have to ask the question: Are the people and government of Papua New Guinea getting a good deal from forestry?" asked High Commissioner David Gordon-Macleod, the highest-ranking British diplomat in Papua New Guinea. "And the answer is: They are getting an appalling deal."
The great wood hope
It's certainly not the deal that Sumo's village of Sumumini imagined when it agreed to logging.
On March 23, 1968, government officials arrived to obtain permission to make timber deals for the village. Thomas Yeweya was 18 years old, and like all village men, he was bare-chested and wore a penis gourd. Like each of the others, he marked the contract with an X because he could neither read nor write.
Now 56, he wears shorts and a T-shirt, but his X survives beside his tribal name, Kaia Yafi, on the brittle yellowed pages of the contract, which begins, "We, the undersigned natives. ..."
"We expected things would change," said Yeweya, his rheumy eyes searching the faces of villagers around him. "But over the years, nothing changed."
The villagers were not the only ones optimistic about what logging could provide to Papua New Guinea.
Global forestry experts once thought the nation's unique system of landownership--97 percent of property belongs to private citizens, not government--would protect it from the corruption and abuse common in other timber countries.
"Papua New Guinea was the great hope of the conservation world," said Lisa Curran, director of Yale University's Tropical Resources Institute.
Yet today, how much do villagers actually receive when their wood ends up on a distant shelf? Figures vary, but the conclusion does not.
"Logging was found to have little long-term beneficial impact on landowners, although they bear the environmental costs," concluded a 2004 government audit.
About 12 cents on the dollar of an average log exported from the country ends up in the hands of citizens, according to a study co-funded by the European Commission. The price of that wood usually rises tenfold by the time it's processed into flooring and shipped to the U.S.
That helps explain why most of the country lives like Sumo's village, a dusty clearing dotted with thatched huts on stilts. Women prod the cooking fires and trek to the river for water. Like 85 percent of the country, the villagers survive almost exclusively on what they grow and hunt: sweet potatoes, wallabies, tree kangaroos, possums, birds.
If they live past 65, they will be ancient by national standards. And, despite the trickle of income from logging, more than a third of the children are underweight by their fifth birthday.
If government regulators are right, things are likely to get worse for Sumumini. "In some instances where logging stops, and the cash flow to landowners stops, landowners are worse off as they have learned to depend on store-bought food," concluded the government's 2004 audit.
British conservation groups, for instance, persuaded lawmakers to ban illegal wood from all government contracts. Illegal logging takes many forms: flat-out theft, evasion of taxes and fees, and violation of national labor and environmental laws.
Their departure left a church with no walls, and villagers squabbled over the little money that remained. The loggers also left an old tugboat that had been gutted by a fire. Today it sits rusting in the bay, a monument to imagined prosperity.
Lindang, 46, is the fourth generation of his family to be chief, but the first to sell the trees.
He is haunted by his decision to harvest the forest. "It looks like a lady that has been spoiled," he said.
His lament is echoed in a lonesome logging camp on the island's eastern reaches. A half-day's boat trip from any road, police station or government office, the Everwell Ltd. logging site is typical of Papua New Guinea's vast, unsupervised industry.
Everwell's general manager, L.Y. Hii, denied that the company breaks any logging laws. "We always follow the rules," he said, adding that he believed government inspectors effectively prevent any violations. "They will not hesitate to stop an operation."
But a veteran Everwell forester said the reality is something different. Relentless demand compels the company to break forestry laws meant to prevent ecological damage, the forester said, including rules intended to ban logging around rivers and restrict the cutting of smaller trees.
"To be honest, I can say, yes, we did break some rules," said the forester, who is not named to protect him from retaliation. "But I'm caught in the middle. The landowners say, `Please don't do that.' But I say, `Look, the log [yard] is empty. We have to do something.'"
He might as well have been speaking for Papua New Guinea itself, torn between the lure of China's cash and the mounting damage to the land.
Dawn of rebellion in Sandaun
After all the expectations of what the global economy might deliver, the villagers of Sumumini finally got angry.
They were struggling to hunt and fish, trekking a full day to find food that had always been close by until logging arrived. They worried about what the next generation would eat. And, more urgently, they worried about the water. Since logging had started nearby in 2001, the river had grown cloudy, villagers said.
"The company works in the river--in the top, the middle and the bottom," said Yeweya, the clan elder. "It's dirty, and we can't drink it."
In similar villages across Sandaun province--"sundown" in the island's pidgin English, because this corner of western Papua New Guinea is the last to see the day's final flickers of sun--similar river damage has triggered a slide in public health.
"Streams that people use for cooking and drinking are contaminated," said Samson Mesambe, head of the local branch of Caritas, the Catholic relief program. "Many of the villages are using water tanks now, but these are not safe because it is standing water, and people are getting malaria, leprosy and elephantiasis of the legs. Those illnesses are very common in areas of logging."
The local timber company, Vanimo Forest Products, referred all questions to the industry association. Tate, the industry spokesman, disputed that logging operations have harmed any local water sources in the country.
Regulators disagree. "The logging operation has affected the local river systems," wrote investigators from the Department for Community Development in a report on Vanimo.
Fed up, villagers came to Sumo last year with hard questions about their arrangement with the timber company. Sumo conceded he couldn't point to a single meaningful benefit that his village had received from logging. So the clan chief did the only thing he could imagine: He led his villagers out onto the logging company's treasured dirt road.
They refused to budge until the timber company agreed to build a school and a clinic. The villagers won, and now they have a new one-room school and clinic, in fresh green paint with white trim. The village is pleased--though it has no idea how it will pay to maintain them.
Clan chief Guling Lindang knows firsthand. From 1998 to 2002, loggers harvested the trees around his oceanfront village in the eastern Buhem Mongi Busiga region. Logging brought a burst of cash, and Lindang's clan broke ground on a tin-roof church. They didn't have electricity or latrines, but they opened four tiny stores to sell crackers, cigarettes and batteries. The company gave Lindang a job mediating local disputes.
And then it was over. The loggers moved on to another plot nearby.
Their departure left a church with no walls, and villagers squabbled over the little money that remained. The loggers also left an old tugboat that had been gutted by a fire. Today it sits rusting in the bay, a monument to imagined prosperity.
Lindang, 46, is the fourth generation of his family to be chief, but the first to sell the trees.
He is haunted by his decision to harvest the forest. "It looks like a lady that has been spoiled," he said.
His lament is echoed in a lonesome logging camp on the island's eastern reaches. A half-day's boat trip from any road, police station or government office, the Everwell Ltd. logging site is typical of Papua New Guinea's vast, unsupervised industry.
Everwell's general manager, L.Y. Hii, denied that the company breaks any logging laws. "We always follow the rules," he said, adding that he believed government inspectors effectively prevent any violations. "They will not hesitate to stop an operation."
But a veteran Everwell forester said the reality is something different. Relentless demand compels the company to break forestry laws meant to prevent ecological damage, the forester said, including rules intended to ban logging around rivers and restrict the cutting of smaller trees.
"To be honest, I can say, yes, we did break some rules," said the forester, who is not named to protect him from retaliation. "But I'm caught in the middle. The landowners say, `Please don't do that.' But I say, `Look, the log [yard] is empty. We have to do something.'"
He might as well have been speaking for Papua New Guinea itself, torn between the lure of China's cash and the mounting damage to the land.
The average Chinese consumer uses less than one-fifth of the world average, Cao said. He suggested the U.S. and other larger consumers take a greater role in protecting distant forests they depend on.
"It takes two-way efforts to crack down on the illegal timber trade," Cao said.
A growing number of rich countries agree. Since 2000, the British central government has required all its contractors to prove that their wood is legal. To make the grade, most contractors use wood stamped with the seal of approval from groups such as the Forest Stewardship Council, which checks forests and factories for good practices.
Japan later adopted a similar policy, and other European nations are examining how to follow suit.
The U.S. is unlikely to do so, said a senior State Department official involved in timber policy. U.S. officials believe that funding other countries to rein in illegal logging within their borders is more effective than trying to stop U.S. imports of illegal wood.
To that end, three years ago the White House announced the President's Initiative Against Illegal Logging, devoting $15 million to helping forest countries such as Liberia better police themselves. U.S. trade and aid officials also are negotiating with Indonesia and other countries to promote legal wood exports.
But that prospect has done little to slow the furious pace at the port of Zhangjiagang. The timber ships from Papua New Guinea and other countries still arrive at all hours. Zhang Rong and fellow traders still swap cargo from unfamiliar countries, and China's tens of thousands of factories still churn out wood products that end up in American homes.
China's factory bosses already are looking for the next big timber country--the next Papua New Guinea. Yao Chengke, general manager of a flooring maker, knows he can't rely on any single country or species too long because each country ultimately runs low.
"If America likes it," Yao said, "then eventually it will be gone."Chicago Tribune
