Officers from the State Forestry Administration and the General Administration of Customs, destroy 6.1 ton of illegal ivory items in Dongguan, Guangdong province, ranging from elephant tusks, to smaller carved ivory items, Jan 6, 2014. [Photo by Wang Zhen/Asianewsphoto]

Because of the legal ivory market, China has long been criticized for being the world's biggest ivory importer and blamed for African elephant poaching.

Between 2010 and 2013, about 100,000 African elephants were killed by poachers, according to a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

However, official numbers show that the market for ivory in China - both legal and illegal - is shrinking. The number of wildlife smuggling cases last year dropped 70 percent from 2013, and the use of legal ivory for carved products dropped to about 80 percent in recent years.

"The investigation found that the scale of illegal ivory production is way smaller than legal production," Meng said