China Paper Association Outline: 14th Five-Year and Long-Term Paper Industry Path Puts Green Growth and Industrial Upgrading in Focus

The world is going through sweeping, once-in-a-century shifts. Trade rules and global governance are being reshaped faster, while international politics is becoming less stable. For China's paper industry to strengthen its overall competitiveness, it must pursue high-quality development across the board—turning a reactive stance into a proactive one, converting difficulties and challenges into opportunities, and keeping the initiative in a safe, efficient and self-controlled way.

China's new-era economic development is defined by a move away from volume-led growth toward high-quality development that meets people's growing need for a better life. The industry should follow supply-side structural reform, avoid blind expansion, broaden its development remit, and shift from pure production to an integrated production-technology-service model. It must speed up adjustments, address unbalanced and inadequate development, resolve the three bottlenecks of resources, environment and structure, protect and upgrade industrial chain security, change growth drivers, and use innovation to lead high-quality development—delivering growth that is higher-level, better-structured, more efficient, fairer and more sustainable.

The paper industry is an important basic raw material sector closely tied to the national economy and social development, with strong sustainable-development characteristics. Its raw materials are renewable, its products recyclable, it can generate biomass energy, and key production chemicals can be recycled, giving it a distinctive natural green advantage. The sector covers three main parts: pulp manufacturing, papermaking (machine-made paper and paperboard, handmade paper and converted paper) and paper products manufacturing. Paper consumption is directly or indirectly influenced by every part of society and is closely linked to national economic security; paper and paperboard consumption is an important gauge of a country's economy and civilization level.

Given China's 'dual circulation' strategy, the goal of reaching per capita GDP of a moderately developed country by 2035, and the experience of developed countries, future paper demand in China is still expected to grow considerably. The outline therefore upgrades the overall development goals for the 14th Five-Year Plan and beyond to align with the 2035 vision and the 2060 carbon neutrality target. It seeks to position competitive advantages, set scientific routes, guidelines, policies and strategies for the industry, plan for the medium and long term, and build a low-carbon, environmentally sustainable green paper sector.

II. Guiding philosophy

Guided by Xi Jinping's important speeches, the industry should strengthen confidence, lift morale, change development thinking and methods, seize the initiative, improve development quality and economic returns, strengthen innovation-driven momentum, and promote green, low-carbon and circular development. It should accelerate structural adjustment to gradually form a new landscape with rational layout, raw materials suited to national conditions, products meeting domestic demand, and high industrial concentration; raise overall industrial quality; safeguard fair markets; promote industrial upgrading; support a better life for the people; and push China's paper industry to a new level in pursuit of the strategic goal of becoming a papermaking powerhouse.

Accelerate structural adjustment: stay committed to supply-side structural reform, improve supply quality, tackle raw material bottlenecks and shore up weaknesses; speed up industrial restructuring and raw material base construction; make regional layout and product mix more rational; and promote coordinated development across the supply chain to lay a solid foundation for high-quality development and a new industrial pattern.

Improve development quality: after more than four decades of rapid growth, products now basically meet domestic demand. As China's economy advances, society expects higher product quality and service standards. The industry must therefore change its development mindset, shift from volume-led to quality-and-benefit-led growth, and sharpen its competitive edge.

Advance industrial upgrading: the era of large-scale expansion is largely over, and the focus must move from scale expansion to structural upgrading. The industry needs to optimize raw materials, products and corporate structure, raise supply chain value, and move from pure manufacturing to higher-value production, technology and service activities.

Pursue innovation-driven growth: shift from factor-driven to innovation-driven development. Large-scale, high-intensity input of production factors is no longer sustainable. Future growth will be driven mainly by technological innovation, technical services and talent competition; stronger innovation capacity should translate into technological advantages that propel the industry.

Promote green development: at the high-quality development stage, people expect a better life and a healthier environment, and demand more high-quality ecological products. The industry must treat green, low-carbon development as an intrinsic requirement of high-quality growth.

Safeguard fair competition: strengthen industry self-discipline and social responsibility, build a scientific, complete and effective standards system, improve a fair competitive market environment, and modernize industry governance systems and capabilities.

III. Issues that must be addressed

High-quality development requires a high-quality talent pool, and a shortage of talent will constrain the industry. It is therefore necessary to speed up training and development of high-caliber, cross-disciplinary, multi-level technical, management and professional production teams. The industry should adopt modern corporate development concepts and modern enterprise systems, improve production, operation and decision-making management, fully connect with upstream and downstream R&D and design services, and pursue sustainable corporate development to meet high-quality development needs.

Potential economic growth supported by resources, energy and environment has fallen sharply. Growth from simple scale expansion is no longer sustainable. The industry faces structural and phased overcapacity in some products, severe product homogenization, weak differentiation and functionalization, rising dependence on imported raw materials, insufficient technological innovation, too many SMEs, inefficient resource use, and environmental governance capacity that still needs improvement.

With the ban on waste paper imports and the carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals, the industry faces multiple challenges: raw material restructuring, energy mix transformation, technology development and the search for future technological breakthroughs, as well as possible declines in supply chain self-control due to raw material shortages.

As policies on raw materials, environmental protection, energy, investment and financing become stricter, the industry's natural green attributes have not been fully reflected. It must fully leverage its green advantages in development and seek broad social recognition. At the same time, it should raise the share of biomass energy, achieve breakthroughs in energy-use methods, theory and technology as early as possible, and support further energy saving, carbon reduction and carbon neutrality. Otherwise, cutting carbon emissions may have to rely on policy measures that constrain production capacity.

IV. Development goals

(1) Adjust the raw material mix

The mismatch between raw material supply and demand is prominent, and dependence on imported wood chips, pulp and paper will continue to rise each year. While fully using overseas pulp and forest resources and achieving complementary advantages across the forestry-paper chain, the industry must focus on adjusting raw material structure. Forestry-paper integration will be a continuous, long-term task, the direction of the industry's future, and an important measure for sustainable development. The policy of promoting paper with forestry, supporting forestry with paper, and jointly developing forestry and paper should be further improved; forestry-paper integration should advance; domestic papermaking raw material forest area should increase; and domestic wood fiber supply capacity should rise.

The industry should shore up weak links in the supply chain, continue to use limited resources efficiently, and increase use of forestry 'three residues,' sugarcane bagasse from sugar processing, agricultural straw, wetland reeds and recovered waste paper. This will reduce the risk of excessive dependence on imported papermaking fiber and safeguard industrial security.

1. Moderately deploy chemical and semi-chemical pulp forestry-paper integration enterprises along the southeast coast to offset resource losses in waste paper recycling;
2. Accelerate construction of owned forest land, raise resource self-sufficiency, and accumulate carbon sinks and biomass resources;
3. Recover domestic waste paper through multiple channels and recycle paper packaging abroad into pulp to maintain domestic raw material supply;
4. Develop bamboo pulp, encourage forest road infrastructure, and scientifically use bagasse, straw and other non-wood raw materials;
5. Carry out international cooperation to develop and build overseas industrial forest bases.

(2) Optimize corporate structure

Seek a more rational industrial layout nationwide and emphasize communication, exchange and collaborative extension among upstream and downstream industries. Optimize regional industrial chain layout, encourage mergers and acquisitions, prevent low-level duplicate construction, improve corporate operation and management, promote modern enterprise systems, and build multiple large enterprise groups through scale and strength.

1. Specialized division among large, medium and small firms: guide mass-product production toward specialization and scale; guide small and medium papermakers toward specialized, refined, distinctive and innovative development; encourage horizontal alliances; and raise specialization and risk resistance.
2. Increase capacity concentration: guide large pulp and paper enterprises to develop through mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures and cooperation, forming internationally competitive comprehensive pulp and paper groups. Cultivate leading paper products companies, raise concentration in paper products, and improve economies of scale.
3. Proactively phase out outdated capacity: shut down production facilities that fail emissions standards, lag in energy consumption or lack product competitiveness, and ensure closed outdated capacity or facilities do not restart. Continue technical upgrades, continuously optimize and improve capacity, and keep capacity technology and competitiveness at an internationally advanced level.

(3) Persist in energy saving and emissions reduction

1. Energy-saving targets

During the 14th Five-Year Plan, the paper industry should increase investment in energy-saving upgrades, fully leverage combined heat and power, make full use of residual pressure, waste heat and other energy from production, and increase utilization of organic waste liquid, organic waste and other resources... (source excerpt)