Private businesses in China's forestry industry will witness a repaid growth this year, said Zhou Shengxian, director of the State Forestry Administration.
The forestry authorities will loosen control over private companies and individuals that intend to be engaged in the industry and make sure competition between the state sector and non-state sector be conducted on an equal footing, Zhou said Friday, February 16.
Private investors can get the right to use land for building commercial forest through purchasing or renting it from the government, and the government will expand the term of the land-use right to 50 to 70 years at most.
Experts here noted this indicated that the government has begun to separate the ownership of the land and that of forest, which means investors can possess the trees they plant even if they do not own the land.
"Private investors' business autonomy will be respected by the government as long as they do not use the land for other purposes other than tree planting nor have the land idle for long," said Zhou.Forests for environmental protection and other public welfare will be funded mainly by the government but private investment is also welcomed, Zhou noted.
State- and collectively-owned forest farms have dominated the forest industry since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. China now has more than 4,200 such forest farms, covering a total land of 53.3 million hectares.
(People's Daily 02/19/2001)
