China Investigating APP Charges
March 31, 2005

Elaine Kurtenbach/ Associated Press

Shanghai, China – China’s State Forestry Administration is investigating charges that Singapore-based Asia Pulp & Paper Co., the world’s largest pulp producer, is conducting illegal logging in southwestern China forests, an official said Thursday, warning that violators would be punished.

“The local forestry administration is now investigating this case,” said Wang Zhuxiong, a senior official with the administration. “If the company is found guilty, it will be punished according to law.”

Wang, deputy director of the administration’s Forest Resources Management Department, confirmed a report by the government’s official Xinhua News Agency that APP is suspected of illegal logging in Yunnan province.

“We believe that both APP and local governments are responsible for the violation,” Wang was quoted as saying. “No violator will escape punishment when the investigation is finished.”

Staff at APP’s Shanghai office declined to comment. There was no immediate response to written inquiries.

APP, a subsidiary of the Indonesian conglomerate Sinar Mas Group, announced in December that it had commissioned a review by an independent, international “third party” into the allegations against its Yunnan operations.

The company says its plants use only legal timber. It has denied allegations that some of its factories in China use illegally harvested wood from Cambodia and Indonesia.

The environmental group Greenpeace began campaigning against APP’s Yunnan operation last year, accusing the paper maker of illegally felling old growth forests to clear the way for fast-growing eucalyptus plantations.

APP contends it does not use wood from old-growth forests. It says it is planting only on wasteland in the 4.5 million acre forest and pulp base in Yunnan, a mountainous, partly tropical province bordering Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar.