China’s Xi Jinping says Ukraine war has shown the ‘extreme importance’ of food security
- President Xi Jinping has said agriculture is the foundation of national security and that weak links – including low productivity – must be addressed
- China faces increasing pressure to feed its 1.4 billion people and ‘mounting external containment and uncertainty, Xi said in a newly released speech
Chinese President Xi Jinping has said global market turbulence caused by the Ukraine war has shown that agriculture is a “national security issue of extreme importance”, while making a strong call for food self-sufficiency in a newly published speech.
At the annual central rural work conference in December, Xi said agriculture was the foundation of national security and that weak links – including low productivity – must be addressed, according to a full transcript released by the official Qiushi journal on Wednesday.
China faces increasing pressure to feed its 1.4 billion people and “mounting external containment and uncertainty”, he said in his address to officials from agriculture departments.
“Containment from the rest of the world has escalated, and there’s an obvious increase in all kinds of uncertainty and unpredictability.
“Once something’s wrong with agriculture, our bowls will be held in someone else’s hands and we’ll have to depend on others for food. How can we achieve modernisation in that case?”
