TITLE:
From Logs to Lumber: Product Upgrading in China’s Wood Imports from ASEAN, 2010-2024
AUTHORS:
Khoinguyen Nguyen, Zhijie Guan
KEYWORDS:
Log Export Ban, Product Upgrading, China-ASEAN Trade, Wood Products, Substitution Ratio
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.14 No.10,
October
29,
2026
ABSTRACT: China’s log imports from ASEAN collapsed from USD 1.93 billion in 2014 to USD 42 million in 2024, a fall of 97.8 percent that followed a wave of log export bans across mainland Southeast Asia. Whether this collapse represents a loss of trade or a change in its form has not been measured. Using UN Comtrade records of China’s imports of logs, sawnwood, veneer and plywood from the ten ASEAN member states over 2010-2024, this paper constructs a substitution ratio that divides the rise in processed-wood imports by the fall in log imports, and evaluates it country by country. Two findings emerge. Compositional upgrading is real and robust: the log share of the four-product total fell from 48.7 percent in 2014 to 2.3 percent in 2024, and the upgrading index rose from 0.187 to 0.359. Nominal-value substitution is incomplete: the region-wide substitution ratio is −0.12, and −0.26 once Thailand is excluded, meaning that processed-wood imports fell alongside logs rather than replacing them. The processed-wood total is dominated by Thai rubberwood sawnwood from a country with negligible log supply, while Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia recorded declines in processed wood as well. Myanmar is the only case of partial substitution among suppliers of consequence, at 0.20. Imports changed following the restrictions; these descriptive changes cannot establish policy effects or domestic processing capacity.