Source?
Fun story: Beijing kids are all required to plant trees on school organized trips (which they must also pay to plant). So they go to places in the hinterland that are designated for tree planting, and plant their trees. After each school group leaves, the trees are promptly dug out so they can be planted by the next group of kids.
Green theater.
Not only that, there are concerns around lack of biodiversity in the trees being planted: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160907125303.h...
The West tried it, not knowing because it had never been done before, and found it had issues.
I would expect the West to be criticised as much, if not more so for doing the same thing today.
Later edit: This forest which got knocked out during a recent wind-storm in the Italian Dolomites [1] looks like being an "artificial" one, at least judging by how the remaining trees all look the same and are almost geometrically positioned. The article does indeed say that the forest was "centuries-old" but I think that only better underlines what I was saying, that the West has been repeating the same and same mistake (i.e. "dumb", non-thought out reforestation) for centuries now. It's too bad that with the recent climate-related changes our tampering with the ecosystem is really shown for what it is: a really, really dumb and non-thought out action.
[1] https://www.italymagazine.com/news/storms-italys-dolomites-r...
Edit: In response to your edit. Are you sure that isn't native woodland? I would expect the higher reaches of a mountain to be pine trees. The article mentions Stradivarius, violins are made of spruce amongst other woods.
Plus those forests are obviously somewhat sustainable, the Chinese plantings are dying within a few years.
Hard to tell 100% without being present on site but that's my guess, yeah. I've very rarely seen "natural" forests being completely wiped out like this as a result of strong winds, the worst that can happen is some older trees being knocked down here and there, but, as I said, I've not yet seen "natural" forests being completely knocked down as a result of one wind-storm.
I also suspect those were planted forests because you cannot use that wood as raw material for Venice's Arsenal for centuries past without planting something in return. I suspect the planting continued even after the Arsenal itself and wood-shipping in general were no longer a thing.
I doubt theres a forest in Europe that hasn't been touched by man.
Venice would have been very selective about the wood it would have cut for ships etc, you can't just cut any old wood. It needs to be knot free, be straight, or have just the right curvature. They weren't clear felling vast swathes, then replanting. I'm not even sure the was conscious planting at all.
"Intact Forest Landscapes" seems to exclude any human made forest. So are you against all human planting of forests?
The lack of biodiversity is a major concern, since we often take shortcuts by planting cuttings, which are genetic clones, or by using an initial pool that isn't sufficiently diverse.
An artificial forest is better than no forest, off course, but wild, ancient forests are more precious, since they are living DNA libraries.
> I doubt theres a forest in Europe that hasn't been touched by man.
https://www.dw.com/image/45302299_401.png
Generally you have "untouched" as in oldgrowth/primary forest and not being a secondary forest, which takes a few hundred years.