Xi is pushing China to increase farmland for grains. It's a call for swadeshi food security

Xi's campaign is loaded with classical Chinese phrases to hammer home the significance of food security in China's history. In the past four decades, a construction spree to build bridges, factories, hotels, and malls engulfed cultivable land in the country. Between 1985 and 2014, construction land in China grew from 24.61 million hectares to 38.11 million hectares, an annual rise of 1.52 per cent. If you watch a recent episode of Xinwen Lianbo, a China Central Television programme, you will see President Xi Jinping standing in the middle of grain fields in every province he has inspected over the past…