Inside Beijing's elephant graveyard: How China's ivory trade thrives, drives world market

With its sleek glass and wood exterior, the Tianya Antiques City is a temple to modern Chinese craftsmanship. Inside, traders sell their wares from boutique stalls more like museums than markets - jade, emerald and coral. But the real draw for visitors to the Beijing centre is also its most controversial: ivory.

As a high-level summit to combat wildlife trafficking and poaching opens in London on Wednesday, hosted by the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge, shifting Chinese attitudes towards ivory will be one of the most important goals, given that it is the world's most populous nation with a strong appetite for elephant tusk.

It will not be easy, as Fu Junjun, who works at her father's ivory shop in the 11-floor market, testified. "The price of ivory keeps going up, and the government's decision to destroy that ivory stockpile actually helped us," she said, referring to the recent crushing of six tons by the Chinese authorities. "The smaller stores now find it harder to get a good supply, but bigger stores like us have hardly felt any impact and it helped put the price up."

Ivory is legal in China provided it comes from a government-registered dealer, and there continues to be a significant demand - partly as an increasingly valuable commodity and partly because, according to the principles of feng shui, ivory can "disperse misfortune and drive out evil spirits".

In 2008, the international community allowed four African countries - Namibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Botswana - to sell their stockpiles of ivory to Japan and China for a total of $15 million (£9 million) in an attempt to control the slaughter of elephants. All of the ivory available in China is technically supposed to have come from that auction, and each carving carries its own certificate of provenance. 

But environmentalists warn that there is rampant cheating in the system and that illegal ivory is easily laundered. A survey by IFAW in 2011 found that, of 158 shops and carving factories in Beijing, Shanghai, Fuzhou and Guang-zhou, 101 were not licensed, or were selling smuggled ivory.

At Panjiayuan, Beijing's biggest curio market, dealers said they had no elephant tusk on offer. But when asked if they wanted to buy an unlicensed piece of ivory, several asked to take a look.

"I have bought cheap ivory online," said Xu Song, a 25-year-old carver. "I cannot say whether they were smuggled or not, but they are cheap, so I suppose so.

"Perhaps the biggest legacy of the decision to allow ivory auctions is that it has convinced the Chinese that ivory is no longer a desperately endangered commodity. I do not think the supply of ivory is a problem. We have not really thought about it."

On the upside, the Chinese have discovered a new commodity that is now rivalling elephant ivory in desirability: woolly mammoth ivory. Each summer, hundreds of tusks are dug up in Siberia and sent south for carving.