A Reliable Means Fostering Sustainable Forestry Development in China: Public Finance

In China, the major contribution of forestry has been changed from providing wood products to protecting and improving environment in order to promote sustainable national economic development. Increment of vegetation and development of forestry are the important basis for national sustainable economic development. Based on the history of forestry development in China, the finance support is the key factor in forestry development. Before the 1990s, the finance system was planning economic system in which the finance support for forestry had both public and productive characteristics. As the result, the major funds went to productive side since it could provide profits, but the public side of forestry, which mainly provides ecological and social effects、was always short of finance support. During the economic system reform, China national economic system changed into market system from planning system, setting up public finance system is an important part of the finance system reform. The new system will provide reliable and stable finance measurement for public forestry or non-profit forestry for which the finance support will not only be increased, but also has a fixed and independent channel. Of course, setting up the public finance system is a complicated work which has long way to go for China. Since there is a gap between fund demand of forestry and the national finance support ability, the reform must consider national finance issues and carefully design the new system in order to develop forestry sustainable ability. In this paper, the ways in which the finance factor influences on forestry development have been discussed. Based on the discussion, a new finance system, public finance, has been designed.