Thank you very much for the question.
As I mentioned in my opening comments, we're quite proud of the success we've had in opening up the Chinese market, for example. The partnership between the Province of British Columbia, the federal government, and the industry worked aggressively over a long period of time, for over 10 or 12 years. It's like the comedian's joke; it took me 20 years to become an overnight success.
It took us 10 or 12 years to get into the Chinese market. The use of wood was not common in much of the residential construction in China and other forms of construction, and we literally built schools, trained architects, and worked with the construction industry in China to grow that market. Thanks to the governments, provincial and federal, and thanks to our companies, we have gone from virtually zero to, as I said, over $4.7 billion.
But that's not the whole of Asia. The Japanese have been a traditional customer of ours since the beginning of the last century. After the earthquake in 1924, we were considerably generous in helping to get them rebuilding, and they've continued to be a good customer and a good partner throughout the last century. Though Japan has had some economic difficulties, we've maintained that marketplace. The free trade agreement in Korea is also very helpful to us. Australia had already entered into a free trade agreement, so making sure we were competitive in our tariffs was very important.
If you mention those three countries—China, Korea, and Japan—they are among the three largest international customers we already have. My board chair, the president of Canfor, Don Kayne, when asked what our next opportunity is, likes to say that the next China is China.
Continuing to expand our opportunities in the Pacific Rim is incredibly important. The TPP is a significant part of that, but I know that Catherine has made presentations to the trade committee saying that it's not just trade agreements. We also need to make sure we have a transportation system that gets our product there.
We have very capable trade representatives in the embassies and in the trade commission offices to help us open up doors and understand procedures. While we have good work happening, there's still much more we can do.