China's booming furniture industry and soaring demand for luxury goods is fuelling illegal logging of thousands of cubic metres of tropical hardwoods in South-East Asia, environmental group Greenpeace says.

It said Chinese importers were evading an Indonesian ban on the hardwood known as "merbau" by labeling it as sawn timber.

"This is a highly prized species for luxury goods and the market demand in China as well as in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific is driving merbau to extinction," said Tamara Stark, Greenpeace China's Forests Campaign Coordinator.

"If the current trends are not reversed, even at the current legally approved rates of logging, merbau will be extinct in the wild within 35 years. This illegal trade means we'll lose it much sooner than that.'2

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[The Chinese are really learning the game well! I'm proud that we can this wonderful global business culture.]