Oct 08, 2014. /Lesprom Network/. China has 7.2 million hectares of bamboo forest, accounting for one fourth of the global total of which 4.2 million hectares are unmixed bamboo forest and mainly distributed in 20 provinces of the Yangtze River Basin, southern China and the southwest region, ITTO reported.

Moso bamboo (tortoise-shell bamboo, or mao zhu) is a temperate species of giant timber bamboo and is widely distributed China. At present, the annual value of China's bamboo industry output is $14.5 billion.

According to the China Bamboo Industry Development Plan formulated in 2013, the total value of China’s bamboo industry output will be $48 billion by 2020 and direct employment in the bamboo industry could grow to 10 million.

There are thousands of bamboo products which can be grouped into the following major categories: bamboo products for daily use, bamboo arts and crafts, bamboo panels, bamboo charcoal, paper making, furniture, packaging, medicine, food and textiles. Bamboo has even been used to make keyboards and hardware framework.

However, there are some problems in China’s bamboo processing industry. Currently most of China’s bamboo processing industries are very small scale. The number of bamboo processing enterprises with annual output value of RMB10 million ($1.6 million) account for only 8% of all entreprises.