Four Chinese companies successfully bid for the right to import ivories that year, bringing 62 tons to the country, which is the only batch of ivories legally allowed to circulate in China until 2017.
According to DNA analysis, 90 percent of smuggled ivories in the world come from Africa, Southern Weekend reported.
Concealed in containers, luggage, or in the mail, ivories are transferred from the black market in Africa to Asia and Europe. Nearly half of the ivories that land on the southeast coast of China are processed in Guangdong, Fujian and Zhejiang provinces and are then sent to Beijing, Tianjin, Shandong and Jiangsu, said the report.
China National Arts & Crafts (Group) Cooperation (CNACGC) is one of the companies that import ivories. To date, it has sold only 17.5 tons of ivories, according to the Southern Weekend, which also reported that two ivory carving factories in Beijing and Guangzhou bought 13 tons of the batch, while some smaller factories shared the last 4.5 tons.
With the limited supply of ivories coming from only the CNACGC, the ivory market was supposed to shrink in China. Instead it has boomed over the last seven years from nine processing factories and 31 retail locations to 36 processing enterprises and 137 resellers, Southern Weekend reported. Read the full report here.
Source: by Liu Meng (Global Times), People's Daily Online.
