Trade Potential of China’s Importation of Woody Forest Products from Countries along the “Belt and Road”

Countries along the " Belt and Road” are important import markets for Chinese woody forest products. On the basis of selecting indicators from the port efficiency, customs environment, regulatory environment, e-commerce, and financial services, we build a trade facilitation measurement index system using principal component analysis, and use random frontier gravitational models to explore the trade potential of China’s importation of logs, sawn timber, wood pulp, paper and paperboard from countries along the Belt and Road. The results show that China has a large trade potential for importing sawn timber, logs, paper and paperboard from countries along the route. The countries with large import potential for paper and paperboard are India, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. The countries with high potential for wood pulp import are Austria, Poland, and Slovakia. The countries with high import potential of sawn timber are Austria, Poland, and Romania. The countries with large import potential of logs are Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. There exist differences in the factors that influence the import trade potential of different woody forest products. On the whole, product complementarity, CAFTA (China-Asean Free Trade Area) and APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) membership have greater impacts on the realization of the import trade potential of wood-based forest products.