Modern Highly Efficient Sustainable Forestry -the Only Strategic Choice for Forestry Development in China

This paper at its beginning briefly analyzed the three historical periods of forestry development, namely the primitive forestry in preagricultural and agricultural era, the traditional forestry in industrial (premodern) era and the modern forestry in post-industrial contemporary era .An emphasis was made that the real modern forestry started only lately at the middle of the 20 century after the breakthrough of the worldwide ecological awareness, and it is now only at the stage of formation and transition from the past.A brief review was made in this paper on several forest management theories in the transition period. Those included the multiple use forestry, differentiated purpose forestry, new forestry, near-natural forestry ( naturnahe forstwirtschaft ), ecological forestry etc . The background of their origination , their rational nucleus and their limitation in application were indicated.It was concluded that the only strategic choice for forestry development in the social-economic situation of post-industrial or knowledge economics era is the modern highly efficient and sustainable forestry. On the background of China's reality the modern forestry should be proceeding to satisfy the following requirements: (1) the integration of the protection of the existing forests, establishment of new forest resources and overall increase of forest productivity; (2) the integration of conservation forestry, naturalized forestry and intensive plantation forestry; (3) the integration of rational arrangement of multiple forest categories with the integral management on the multiple functions of forests ; (4) the integration of the new hightechniques with the valid traditional techniques to build-up a type of knowledge-concentrated forestry . The high efficiency and sustainability are the essential characteristics of China's modern forestry .