Global Planted Forest Development: Opportunities,Challenges and Policy Choices

In recent decades, there has seen a dramatic expansion of global planted forest area and their great impact on human life. It is reported in Forest Resource Assessment 2010 that the current area of global planted forests is about 264 million ha, representing only 7% of the total forest area but able to meet the two thirds of the global demand for logs. Planted forests can not only provide timber, fiber, fuel and non-wood forest products, but also contribute to carbon sequestration, restoration of degraded land, landscape rehabilitation and watershed protection. Besides, planted forests can also provide the recreation and amusement for people. In such sense, in the coming decades, planted forests, driven by various factors such as social- economic conditions, market, consumers' demand and new technologies, will have good opportunities for development, and will also increase their contribution to achieving the series of development objectives worldwide. In the meanwhile, the development of planted forests is also constrained by the factors like policies, laws, regulations, technologies and funds, and therefore faced with the challenges in terms of eco- environment preservation, economic development and protection of community interests. Based on the long- term monitoring and research of planted forest development as well as the field study of planted forests abroad, the paper identified the opportunities and challenges in the development of global planted forests through such methods as the SWOT, policy analysis and the others, and proposed the policy choices for promoting the sustainable development of planted forests: 1) There is a need to further understand the functions of planted forests and the importance of the degraded land restoration; 2) A good institutional guarantee and investment environment should be created for the planted forest development; 3) The advanced concepts and methods in terms of the planted forests management should be actively promoted and applied; 4) There is a need to put more focus on environment management and social responsibility; 5) The intensive management of planted forests needs to rely on science and technology support; 6) The international cooperation should be strengthened to jointly facilitate the sustainable development of planted forests.

Structural Deceleration,Financial Expansion and Policy Selection:China's Economic Prospects for 2014

China's economic performance in 2013 has verified that China's economic slowdown is structural rather than cyclical.Current economic growth has been driven primarily by investment in infrastructure and real estate sector.Consumption is sluggish and exports recovery is unsustainable.Financial expansion is a major instrument in offsetting the deceleration of China's economic growth in 2013.But structural root cause of slowdown remains.According to cash flow statement,balance sheet and cross-border capital flow,risks of China's financial system are accumulating under the backdrop of financial expansion.Financial system should play its role of resource allocation and refrain from stimulating demand.Future policy choice will shift from short-term macro policy to institutional reform,including political reform,reform of supply mechanism,balancing between macro-stability policy and structural transition,and reform of financial system.