Abstract: Poplar has many characteristics that make it suitable for plantation forestry when compared to other forest species, such as fast growing, adaptability to different environmental conditions and to different silvicultural systems. All of which enable the production of large quantities of wood in short periods of time, which can be used for different forms of processing in the timber industry, in the pulp and paper industry and as a source of energy. Based on a lot of investigation materials of poplar coppicing system, this paper mainly deals with coppicing techniques of poplars and sustainability from five aspects, e.g. shoot producing meristems, factors affecting the ability to resprout, factors affecting coppicing growth, productivity of the coppicing system and the sustainability of the system. The reasons for using coppice systems in poplars are the relatively high production potential of the coppicing system, and the economically favourable propagation technique using unrooted stem cuttings. The investigations have revealed that the resprouting may originate from different kinds of buds at the base of stems or from the roots; these are either preventitiuos or adventitious buds. However, most of the sprouts in the poplar coppicing system are stump sprouts. The key factors to affect resprouting ability in poplar are stump age, rotation length, stump diameter and the harvesting season, while the growth of sprouts and the productivity of coppicing system are affected by genetic characters, site condition, location of the sprout appearing, harvesting season, number of sprouts reserved on each stump, and the generations of coppicing system. Several leading silvicultural measures in poplar coppicing system were also proposed in order to establish a sustainable plantation in this paper.