Many wealthy Chinese cherish the elegance and artistry of rosewood (hongmu) furniture. Famous for its rich burgundy color, its intricate Ming and Qing dynasty-style carvings, and its shockingly high price tag—a single bed can fetch $1 million—hongmu is distinctly Chinese. The wood’s allure is linked to the grandeur of late imperial China, and as the country has grown richer consumers have developed a seemingly insatiable appetite for it.
Historically, Chinese emperors commissioned artisans to carve local rosewood trees. Today most rosewood species are threatened or endangered, so to feed the market Chinese suppliers go to great lengths to acquire the wood from foreign sources.
Largely due to rising Chinese demand, rosewood is now the world’s most trafficked illegal wildlife product by volume, and its seizure value surpasses that of ivory, rhino horns, and big-game cats combined. The value of rosewood exports from West Africa to China between 2017 and 2022 was estimated at more than $2 billion, with the precious timber fetching on average more than $20,000 per metric ton in 2021. Imports rose 14-fold from 2009 to 2014, while Africa’s share of China’s illegal rosewood imports skyrocketed from 40 percent in 2008 to over 90 percent in 2018.
China’s upper-class buyers are generally unaware that the wood’s beauty is belied by the violence, corruption, and environmental degradation associated with the criminal syndicates that log and transport it. Driven by popular demand, Chinese nationals based in West Africa make large profits getting the illegally harvested logs to market in China. Working with Chinese state-owned construction firms doing business in the region and corrupt local agents, these syndicates have become global leaders in the illegal logging of rosewood trees—which appear to bleed when cut.
For those living in communities directly impacted by deforestation, the damage has been profound and far-reaching. Illegal logging is estimated to cost Africa $17 billion annually. Extreme drought and flooding linked to the loss of rosewood trees have had devastating agricultural impacts in sub-Saharan Africa, where 70 percent to 80 percent of rural employment is tied to agriculture.
The illegal rosewood trade also finances separatist insurgents in Cote d’Ivoire, militia groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Islamic State-linked militants in Mozambique, al Qaeda affiliates in Mali, and possibly Boko Haram in Nigeria. The communities on the front lines are caught in a vicious cycle of poverty and violence, which produce the instability and corruption that fuel the rosewood trade.
West African governments are trying to combat illegal logging, but they “need help from consumer countries to make the next leap in combatting illegal logging and trade, and China has the opportunity to play a key leadership role,” explained Babacar Salif Gueye, technical advisor to the Senegalese Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development.
In fact, China has already become a leader in reforestation at home, investing more than $100 billion and reforesting more of its land than any other country. Key to the success of these efforts was the enforcement of existing bans on logging and the introduction of a total ban on commercial logging in China’s remaining natural forests. While these programs have come in for some criticism, they have also yielded positive results on the country’s environment, improved agricultural productivity, and increased rural household income. But while China has been protecting rosewood and reforesting at home, to meet growing domestic demand its loggers have turned overseas.
China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 catalyzed the problem by reducing tariffs on imported timber. Together with an end to commercial logging in China, lower tariffs, and spiking demand, loggers were pushed out of China into other regions. Today, having decimated most rosewood species in Southeast Asia and Central America, the trade has shifted to Africa.
In most cases, the problem is not the laws in African countries, but their enforcement. West African countries generally have robust environmental regulations that criminalize illegal logging. In the 2010s, West African governments sought international help through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Today, every country in West Africa is a signatory to CITES, which banned the logging, transport, and export of rosewood in all countries where the species was endemic in 2022.
Nigeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Niger, Senegal, and Sierra Leone agreed to enforce this ban. But given the extremely high value of hongmu, a shadowy network of corruption has emerged that begins with Chinese agents in West Africa and ends with domestic Chinese consumers, but includes African intermediaries, from port operators to high-level African government officials. “Chinese law is weak,” explained one exporter, “so we usually find a state-owned company or shell companies that are approved by the customs.”
But Beijing has both the technology and the legal authority to crack down on the criminals who are violating Chinese laws with impunity. It is time “to focus attention on the consumer countries (largely China and Vietnam) who import illegal timber from Ghana,” argued Kweku Asomah-Cheremeh, Ghana’s former minister for lands and natural resources.
Scientists are developing advanced forensic tools for tracing the origin of wood products. A sample can provide investigators information about the wood’s cell structure, DNA, and chemical bonds to determine its species and the kinds of soil, rainfall, and other environmental factors it was exposed to during its lifetime, and, ultimately, where it comes from. But because they are expensive, these techniques are used mostly to collect trial evidence for prosecution, not as a first line of defense to identify illegal timber imports.
While Chinese investigators can and should expand their use of these high-tech tools, the most immediate and impactful response would be to create a robust front-line deterrent against illegal imports. One problem is that China does not have a mandatory chain-of-custody system to monitor the source of its imported timber. Beijing did revise its Forest Law in 2019 to include a section on combating the import of illegal timber. But the law does not require importers to provide evidence that their timber was sourced legally and allows them to avoid prosecution if they claim to lack “full awareness.”
In 2022, Beijing released a new draft Regulation on the Implementation of the Forest Law for public comment. But enforcement will not begin until it is officially finalized, and even then, the new law does not include a supply chain tracing system. Instead, China has voluntary guidelines for tracing timber, which, according to a study conducted by Forest Trends, have been developed as a “stepwise approach towards eventual mandatory legislation.” But China has been revising its voluntary guidelines for 14 years and “at this speed, Nigeria will be out [of rosewood] in two years” and Ghana in one year, said one Chinese exporter.
Beijing can do better. In 2017, China banned elephant ivory, a move the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) called a “game-changer” in “turning the tide against the illegal ivory trade.” Since then, according to the WWF, both demand among Chinese consumers and ivory prices have fallen. The government’s change in both policy and attitude toward ivory precipitated a change in social norms; the percentage of Chinese citizens unwilling to buy ivory increased from 57 percent before the ban to 73 percent two years later. Purchasing ivory shifted from being a status symbol to a socially unacceptable display of animal cruelty. A 2025 report from the Wildlife Justice Commission found that between 2018 and 2020, the price of raw ivory halved after China, the world’s largest consumer, closed its domestic ivory markets and enhanced law enforcement.
The European Union, which is the second-largest driver of tropical deforestation after China, has already begun cracking down on the timber smugglers. The 2023 European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) obligates companies to provide detailed and verifiable data about wood products before they can be imported. This includes the geolocation coordinates of the plot of land where the logs were harvested, the supplier’s identity, and documentation that harvesting was done in compliance with both local laws and the EUDR.
Before it is too late, Beijing should crack down on corrupt importers and implement its own timber-tracking system. China has led a successful reforestation effort within its own borders and slashed ivory imports. Now is the time to apply that same urgency to end illegal rosewood trafficking and hold smugglers accountable for violating both African and Chinese laws.