China

Forestry and fishing

Wholesale destruction of China’s accessible forests over a long period of time gave way to an energetic reforestation program that has proved to be inadequate; forest resources are still fairly meagre. The principal forests are found in the Qin (Tsinling) Mountains and the central mountain ranges and in the uplands of Sichuan and Yunnan. Because they are inaccessible, the Qin forests are not worked extensively, and much of the country’s timber comes from Heilongjiang, Jilin, Sichuan, and Yunnan.

China has a long tradition of ocean and freshwater fishing and of aquaculture, and it is the world’s leading producer in both categories. The bulk of the catch comes from Pacific fisheries, with nearly all of the remainder from inland freshwater sources. Pond raising has always been important and has been increasingly emphasized to supplement coastal and inland fisheries threatened by overfishing and to provide valuable export commodities such as prawns. Aquaculture surpassed capture, in terms of overall tonnage, in the early 1990s.

Guangxi: fishing in the Li RiverFisherman and his trained cormorants on the Li River, northeastern Zhuang Autonomous Region of Guangxi, China.© cchfoto/Fotolia