On May 8th, inside the production workshop of Hunan Rongjing Bamboo Industry Development Co., Ltd. in Huitong County Industrial Development Zone, automated production lines run at full speed. A full workflow including slicing, carbonization, drying and packaging proceeds seamlessly. Massive moso bamboos are finely processed into bamboo skewers and other finished products, ready to travel across mountains and seas to all corners of the globe.
Rolling green mountains are crowned by vast bamboo forests surging like waves. In recent years, leveraging its ecological strengths and seizing opportunities for green development, Huaihua has capitalized on the advantages of the international land port, full-industry-chain layout and innovative development concepts. The city has strived to drive its bamboo industry to go global. With eco-friendly quality and exquisite craftsmanship, local bamboo products shine brightly in the international market, writing Huaihua’s chapter of translating lucid waters and lush mountains into invaluable assets through overseas trade.
Rooted in Resources, Upgraded by Sci-tech for Premium Bamboo Products
Endowed with abundant and extensive bamboo resources, Huaihua boasts a bamboo forest area of 1.6887 million mu and 310 million standing bamboos, ranking the 4th in Hunan Province in terms of total bamboo reserves. Bamboo forests are concentrated in Huitong, Jingzhou, Hongjiang City and Hongjiang District. Local moso bamboo features excellent toughness, compression resistance and fiber strength, laying a unique natural foundation for the development of the bamboo industry.
Huaihua has further tapped into its green ecological endowment to consolidate the foundation for overseas exports. The city has introduced diverse market players to participate in bamboo forest development, continuously advanced bamboo forest upgrading, FSC certification and forest road construction. To date, 320,000 mu of bamboo forests have been upgraded, 680,000 mu have obtained FSC certification, and 833 kilometers of forest roads have been built. A number of high-standard demonstration bamboo bases have been established, forming an integrated raw material supply system covering bamboo cultivation, harvesting & transportation, and primary processing — ensuring premium quality of exported bamboo products from the source.
“The company consumes about 6,000 tons of moso bamboo raw materials monthly with an annual processing capacity of 60,000 tons. Our product portfolio includes bamboo skewers, chopsticks and tableware, all undergoing strict quality inspection to meet international standards,” introduced Ma Jin, chairman of Hunan Rongjing Bamboo Industry Development Co., Ltd. Supported by high-quality raw materials and stringent quality control, its products sell well in Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan and other countries, winning wide popularity among overseas consumers.
In Jingzhou Miao and Dong Autonomous County, the workshop of Hunan Chenming Bamboo & Wood Products Co., Ltd. is in full swing, where workers are busy screening and packaging high-end bamboo catering products to fulfill overseas orders. As a comprehensive foreign trade enterprise integrating bamboo product R&D, production, sales and supporting services, over 90% of its products are exported to Japan, the United States and EU countries. In 2025, its export volume exceeded 40 million yuan, with 247 standard containers of bamboo products shipped worldwide to households across the globe.
The robust growth of Hunan Chenming Bamboo & Wood Products epitomizes the export vitality of Jingzhou’s bamboo industry. Known as the “Hometown of Moso Bamboo in China”, Jingzhou has a bamboo forest area of 216,000 mu. In 2025, the county’s bamboo product exports topped 60 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of over 10%, with products sold to more countries and regions including the United States, Mexico, the United Kingdom and Germany.
In recent years, Huaihua has stepped up efforts to introduce leading enterprises and expand the bamboo industry into high-end sectors such as bamboo fiber, bamboo building materials, bamboo chemical engineering and bamboo food, moving steadily up the high-value-added global supply chain. Hunan Yiou New Material Technology Co., Ltd. has launched a high-end bamboo board processing project in Jingzhou. Its bamboo carriage boards are applied to heavy-duty vehicles including Mercedes-Benz (Germany), Isuzu (Japan), Volvo (Europe) and DHL refrigerated trucks (UK). Priced at 8,000 to 10,000 yuan per cubic meter, the boards are 10 times more valuable than raw bamboo materials, becoming highly sought-after commodities in overseas markets.
Accelerated Land Port Operation & In-depth Channel Layout Build New Foreign Trade Routes
Being inland with no border or coastline was once a bottleneck restricting Huaihua’s opening-up. Today, the completion and operation of Huaihua International Land Port has turned the inland city into a frontier of opening-up, paving an expressway for the local bamboo industry to go global.
Leveraging the rail-sea intermodal transport advantages of the international land port, Huaihua’s bamboo products are shipped directly to Japan, South Korea, Europe, America and beyond via dedicated rail-sea lines, greatly cutting logistics time and costs. “Shipping products from Jingzhou via the land port to seaports saves 3 days in transit and reduces freight costs by more than 10% compared with traditional logistics routes,” an executive of a local bamboo enterprise noted. Huaihua International Land Port has greatly enhanced the price competitiveness of Huaihua’s bamboo products in the global market.
To forge a full industrial chain connecting remote mountain bamboo forests to international containers, local bamboo enterprises have innovated trade models and built global sales networks. Hunan Rongjing Bamboo Industry has adopted an integrated model of “base cultivation + physical production + export trade + overseas warehouse + cross-border e-commerce local stores”, successfully opening up the whole industrial chain from Huaihua’s mountainous areas to the global market and emerging as a fast-growing industrial player supported by the international land port.
It is learned that the company launched its first overseas warehouse in Thanh Hoa, Vietnam in July 2023 and added a second one in Bangkok, Thailand in April 2024, with a total floor area of 2,400 square meters covering core Southeast Asian markets with strong e-commerce activity and high demand for bamboo products. “It used to take 15 to 30 days to deliver goods directly from China to Southeast Asia. Now with pre-stored inventory in overseas warehouses, customers can receive goods within 1 to 3 days after placing orders, marking a sharp improvement in logistics efficiency and customer satisfaction,” said Ma Jin. The company now maintains steady overseas orders and expanding global market share.
Supported by Huaihua International Land Port, Hunan Chenming Bamboo & Wood Products has also achieved marked improvement in product delivery quality. Tang Jian, chairman of the company, told reporters that previously, export goods had to be trucked to Qinzhou Port for loading by port staff, often resulting in cargo damage due to third-party handling. Today, containers can be loaded directly at the factory gate, eliminating cargo damage entirely while lowering transportation costs, with an annual shipment of about 400 containers.
Policy Support & Thoughtful Services Empower Bamboo Enterprises to Sail Farther
How to amplify economic benefits from the bamboo industry? The CPC Huaihua Municipal Committee and Huaihua Municipal People’s Government have listed the bamboo industry as a top-leader priority project and incorporated it into the city’s “5+10” modern industrial system, fully launching the industrial chain development drive to boost the industry’s scale, quality and structural upgrading.
Capitalizing on its dual strengths of bamboo resources and the international land port, Huaihua issued the Development Plan for High-Quality Development of the Bamboo Industry (2025-2030), proposing to build an industrial pattern of “one core, two poles and multiple bases” focusing on the “2+4” layout, with a target industrial output value of 20 billion yuan by 2030. Meanwhile, the Several Policies of Huaihua City to Support the High-Quality Development of the Bamboo Industry was rolled out to support the whole industrial chain of bamboo exports.
On July 1, 2025, the Regulations on the Development of Bamboo Industry of Jingzhou Miao and Dong Autonomous County — China’s first special administrative regulation dedicated to bamboo industry development — officially took effect, safeguarding industrial development through legal means.
Authorities have gone deep into the frontline to solve enterprises’ difficulties and deliver targeted support. The Municipal Forestry Bureau has dispatched professional technicians to key bamboo processing enterprises and bamboo bases for on-site inspections and guidance, delivering technical support and problem-solving solutions directly to production lines. The Municipal Council for the Promotion of International Trade has launched enterprise service campaigns to interpret preferential policies, help enterprises connect with overseas clients, participate in economic and trade exhibitions, and tackle export challenges, further bolstering enterprises’ confidence to deepen industrial development and explore global markets.
Moreover, Huaihua has promoted integrated development between bamboo industrial parks and the international land port. Two new parks — Jingzhou Bamboo Science and Technology Industrial Park and Huitong Green Low-carbon Full Bamboo Industrial Park — have been listed among Hunan’s first batch of high-quality bamboo industrial parks, attracting 15 settled enterprises and forming industrial agglomeration to underpin the global expansion of the bamboo industry.
Huaihua’s bamboo industry has achieved leapfrog development, transforming resource advantages into industrial strengths and evolving from an inland city into an export hub. Up to now, the city has nurtured 236 bamboo processing enterprises. Its product lineup has expanded from traditional bamboo chopsticks, skewers and plywood to over 200 varieties across 20 series, including bamboo fiber molded products, bamboo carriage boards and bamboo aviation tableware.
In 2025, Huaihua’s total output value of the bamboo industry reached 6 billion yuan, up 198.5% from 2020; annual bamboo product exports exceeded 100 million yuan, a growth of 136% year-on-year compared with 2020, with products sold to over 50 countries and regions including the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia.
Slender green bamboos connect mountain villages to the world; exquisite craftsmanship builds quality and brands. Standing at a new starting point of development, Huaihua will continue to leverage its resource endowments, give full play to passage advantages and strengthen industrial competitiveness, drive full-chain upgrading of the bamboo industry, enable more Huaihua-made bamboo products to go global and win worldwide reputation, and strive to write a new chapter of surging bamboo waves and green vitality empowering the globe.
(Translated by Tian Xia)