An international forest protection group says Europe and the United States must persuade China to bring its booming timber trade under control.
A report from The Tropical Forest Trust says that, without proper controls, China's increasing timber trade will cause irreplaceable deforestation across the world.

In just 10 years China has moved from being a net importer of wood products to become the world's leading exporter of furniture, plywood and wood flooring, sucking in vast amounts of timber from key sensitive areas, the report says.
While some of these logs were undoubtedly from legal, and therefore sustainable sources, supply chains were so long, varied and opaque that the origin of much of the wood was unverifiable, the Geneva-based charity said.
"If European and US companies and consumers increase their demand for legally-certified wood products, it will inspire a change in the companies' wood purchasing practices in China," TFT executive director Scott Poynton said.
"If using legally-certified wood is viewed as advantageous in the markets, it will be widely imitated in China."
TFT estimates that by 2015 China will have a net demand deficit of 190 million cubic metres of wood a year, equivalent to about 60 million trees.
Illegal logging is both big business and a major contributor to climate change.
The World Bank calculates illegal logging costs producer country governments up to $US15 billion a year in lost revenue from taxes foregone.
The report said China was not only accounting for 70 per cent of hardwood exports from Southeast Asia but was also an aggressive buyer in the markets of Russian Far East and Central Africa, all highly environmentally sensitive areas.
The TTF report was commissioned by Britain's Department of the Environment.