Comparison of International Competitiveness of National Forest Products along the “Belt and Road”

The distribution of forest resources in countries along the " Belt and Road”is not balanced, and the development level of forest products processing industry also varies largely. Only by referring to the actual situation of different countries, can the advantages of forest products trade within the region be complementary. In this way, an objective analysis of forest products production, trade, the status quo and pattern of nations in this region is of practical significance. Based on the database of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, this paper determines a series of international competitiveness indexes of forest products, including production elements, demand conditions, market competition, management model of forest resources, higher forestry education, etc. To avoid excessive indexes and prevent duplicate information, the indexes which are strongly correlated are ruled out. On this basis we build a comprehensive and systematic international competitiveness evaluation index system of forest products, and 27 countries are selected as research object, which either have top trade amount of forest products along the Belt and Road or trade closely and frequently with China on forest products. The combination of technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) and rank sum ratio method (RSR) is used to explore the issue of forest products competitiveness in countries along the Belt and Road.