China’s forest products manufacturing industry is experiencing the dual pressure of forest protection policies and wood scarcity and, therefore, it is of great significance to reveal the spatial agglomeration characteristics and evolution drivers of this industry to enhance its sustainable development. Based on the perspective of large-scale agglomeration in a continuous space, in this study, we used the spatial Gini coefficient and standard deviation ellipse method to investigate the spatial agglomeration degree and location distribution characteristics of China’s forest products manufacturing industry, and we used exploratory spatial data analysis to investigate its spatial agglomeration pattern. The results show that: (1) From 1988 to 2018, the degree of spatial agglomeration of China’s forest products manufacturing industry was relatively low, and the industry was characterized by a very pronounced imbalance in its spatial distribution. (2) The industry has a very clear core–periphery structure, the spatial distribution exhibits a “northeast-southwest” pattern, and the barycenter of the industrial distribution has tended to move south. (3) The industry mainly has a high–high and low–low spatial agglomeration pattern. The provinces with high–high agglomeration are few and concentrated in the southeast coastal area. (4) The spatial agglomeration and evolution characteristics of China’s forest products manufacturing industry may be simultaneously affected by forest protection policies, sources of raw materials, international trade and the degree of marketization. In the future, China’s forest products manufacturing industry should further increase the level of spatial agglomeration to fully realize the economies of scale.

The harmonious coexistence of man and nature is the primary goal of the establishment of national parks. Creating an ecological service supply model that takes into account the efficiency of ecological services, the fairness of residents’ livelihoods, and the reasonable distribution of rights and responsibilities is an important way of achieving that goal. China’s Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park (NTLNP) is a typical national park with state-owned forest land as the main body. Before the establishment of the national park, state-owned forest enterprises (SOFEs) and local government forest departments (LGFDs) were always the undertakers of ecological services. Issues such as the distribution of rights and responsibilities between the NTLNP Administration, SOFEs, and LGFDs and the livelihood of forest workers need to be resolved urgently. This study takes the NTLNP as the study area and constructs a model of government purchasing of ecological services. The main results show the following: (1) The driving factors of the government purchasing of ecological services are increasing the workload of ecological services, the need for workforce transfer, and the optimization of subsidy standards. (2) In the construction of the responsibility system, the NTLNP Administration is the purchaser, SOFEs and Protection Stations are the undertakers, and groups such as third-party institutions and the public are the Supervisors and Evaluators. (3) Setting the purchase price in 2022 at CNY 47,654.44 per person while maintaining an average annual growth rate of 6.10% will match the per capita wage income level of urban workers nationwide in 2035. Based on the research results, it is proposed that payment for ecosystem services (PES) and ecological compensation (EC) have mature research paradigms in solving the problems of efficiency and fairness, but government purchasing of ecological services is a more appropriate policy tool in terms of arranging rights and responsibilities. This study attempts to construct a model of government purchasing of ecological services in order to provide a useful reference for national parks with state-owned land as the main body.