Though China produces 40% of the world's fruits and vegetables, it is also a large consumer of imported meat and a large portion of the meat produced at home requires imported feed like soybeans and sorghum.
As China gets wealthier, demand for beef and lamb is also going up and they have a larger ecological footprint compared to pork and poultry.
China can be food independent without famine but it will come at a big cost to the current way of life. The price of meat would sky rocket without imports.
I think it would be wise to increase land used for production of animal protein. It would make sense strategically and financially for China to produce some of these crops in the Western and Northern regions. With water, desert farming becomes viable. I've seen half mile diameter circular irrigation farms in otherwise barren Nevada, it can be done in China too.
Southern California can support 20 million people because of the water diversion from the Colorado River. One can imagine what is possible in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia after a water diversion program.
Initially a westward migration can be incentivize by a combination of infrastructure, mining and oil projects, exactly how the rush to California began.
In my view it is not just a strategic endeavour but a financially viable long term investment and will improve the material wealth of the rest of China. The agricultural boom in Xinjiang is already impressive because the area enables scale, also pushing demand for advanced agricultural machinery which is part of MIC2025. You aren't going to get the same demand relatively speaking from hilly Southern China which is better off producing high value but less strategic crops.
