Abstract: [Objective] Aiming at the measurement error and biased decomposition in existing researches, this paper adopts a new estimation method, recalculates 2004-2015 Chinese forestry technical efficiency and total factor productivity (TFP) growth, with a view to understand and evaluate correctly the development model of Chinese forestry industry and the quality of economic growth.[Method] Based on the "one-step" stochastic frontier approach (SFA) and provincial panel dataset (2004-2015), this paper analyses the regional disparity of technical efficiency in China forestry industry and its influence factors. On this basis, the TFP growth and their components in each province and region are measured by the SFA-Malmquist index method. Finally, by dividing the change of TFP into changes in technology and in technical efficiency, the sources of TFP growth in each province and region are analyzed.[Result] The result show that:1) There were widespread inefficiency in China forestry production, and the average technical efficiency is only 0.546 during 2004-2015, still has much room for improvement. 2) In all factors, annual precipitation, the controlled areas of forest pest and the amount of forestry professional technical personnel have a significant positive effect on the forestry technical efficiency, while the occurred areas of forest pest has the opposite effect, and the forest fire disaster area influence is also negative, but not significant. 3) Over the period of 2004-2015, China's forestry annual growth rate of TFP is 16.48%, but this growth is mainly driven by the frontier technology progress, and the technical efficiency improvements had played a side effect. 4) Almost all provinces had got a positive growth in forestry TFP growth, but there was over half of provinces' TFP growth showed deviates from technology progress and technical efficiency improvements.[Conclusion] In the past decades, the growth of TFP in China forestry industry was achieved predominantly by technological progress rather than technical efficiency improvements, the latter has weaken and even dragged the growth of TFP in some provinces. According to the comparison of each province and four regions, almost all the provinces spending a positive TFP growth rate, but there are significantly regional variations in growth rate and there are also regional differences in growth momentum. Therefore, in order to sustain TFP growth of China forestry industry, apart from the continued efforts in increasing the technology innovation investment and promoting technology progress, it is equally important to strengthen the absorption and utilization of existing technologies, and reduce the loss of technical efficiency. The government should adopt the corresponding forestry development policies according to the growth characteristics of TFP in different regions.

Key words: forestry, technical efficiency, total factor productivity, stochastic frontier approach, Malmquist index