CFPEC’s (China Forest & Paper Executive Club) 9th annual meeting was held successfully in Changsha, Hunan Province from April 21 to April 24, 2006, a beautiful city on the Xiang Jiang River.

Regarded as the "high energy-consumption, high pollution and resource-intensive" industry for quite a long time, the paper industry in China does causes severe environmental pollution over the past years, however, the contribution it has made to the economic growth was still at low levels, thus the main topic of the 9th annual meeting is due to find out the way of "low energy-consumption, low pollution and sustainable development" and to further reshape the negative image China’s paper industry has ever had.

Mr. Wang Wei, the section chief of the Industrial Department under National Development & Reform Commission (NDRC); Mr. Huang He, Director of DRC of Hunan Province and Mr. Fan Jianping, Director of Economic Forecast Department under the State Information Center, are among the guests invited to attend the conference. Representing the government in Hunan Province and local DRC, Mr. Huang firstly welcomes all of the delegation and wishes a great success of the annual meeting. Mr. Wang Xiang, the Board Chairman of Hunan Tiger Forest & Paper Group, then made a welcoming speech, as the host and newly elected chairman of the club, to those guests come from afar. Additionally, Mr. Fan Jianpin also analyzed the macro economic situation for 1Q 2006, in which, he pointed out that the growth rate of GDP in China in 1Q 2006 reached 10.2%, up 0.3% compared to the same period last year. In all, China has a favorable beginning implementing its 11th Five-Year Plan: for example, the nation’s overall performance in terms of agriculture, industry, consumption & demand, international trade and financial sectors are encouraging, however, some other problems still exist—uneven international balance of payment results in more and more negative effects, which has laid heavier burden on the central government to adjust its policies concerned.

Mr. Wang Wei introduced relevant policies concerning the development of the paper industry during the period of "11th Five-Year Plan" (2006-2010) to all participants, saying that the nation will step up control over energy consumption and environmental protection, thus the paper industry needs a through shake-up of the way it runs and should manage to reduce energy consumption and water consumption, upgrade existing facilities so that pollutants generated will be lowered to the maximum. At the end of the meeting, Mr. Xu Weidong, the general secretary of the club made a concluding speech on "How to take the road of circulatory economy"—entrepreneurs in the paper industry should have a better understanding on the nation’s strategy of "circulatory economy" in the meantime, issues like energy-saving and pollution reduction should be brought up on the agenda. Mr. Xu added, "Club members are all leading enterprises in China, thus we should set great examples to other counterparts in the industry and work together to establish the new type of the paper industry".

Energy savings, environmental protection, and "circulatory economy" strategy are the three major issues for China’s paper industry to achieve the goal of healthy and rapid growth; moreover, they remain the key points on whether the industry could realize "industrialization and modernization" in the near future. In this respect, the annual meeting does plays its role.