China has long been one of the world\u2019s biggest markets for ivory but, as of 2018, all trade in ivory and ivory products in the country is illegal.
\nThe move is being hailed as a major development in efforts to protect the world\u2019s elephant population.
\nWildlife campaigners believe 30,000 African elephants are killed by poachers every year.
\nState media said there had already been a 65 percent decline in the price of raw ivory over the past year.
\nThere had also been an 80 percent decline in seizures of ivory entering China, said Xinhua.
\nThe ban was announced last year and came into effect on Sunday, the last day of 2017.
\nSixty-seven official factories and shops dealing in ivory had already been closed by March 2017, said Xinhua, and the remaining 105 were to have shut down by Sunday.
\n\u201cFrom now on, if a merchant tells you \u2018this is a state-approved ivory dealer\u2019… he is duping you and knowingly violating the law,\u201d the forestry ministry said on its Weibo microblog.
\nXinhua said \u201cone of the largest ever public awareness campaigns\u201d had been carried out in the run-up to the ban, with support from celebrities including superstar basketball player Yao Ming.
\nThe World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) said it was \u201cdelighted to see the doors of the world\u2019s largest ivory market close\u201d.
\n\u201cThis is a significant step that should prove to be a huge boost to elephant protection efforts in Africa,\u201d said WWF\u2019s Africa director Fred Kumah in a blog post.\u2014 BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China has long been one of the world\u2019s biggest markets for ivory but, as of 2018, all trade in ivory and ivory products in the country is illegal. The move is being hailed as a major development in efforts to protect the world\u2019s elephant population. Wildlife campaigners believe 30,000 African elephants are killed by poachers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":58440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58439"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58441,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58439\/revisions\/58441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}