China turns food dependence into geopolitical weapon

China’s growing dependence on imported food is becoming both a strategic vulnerability and a source of geopolitical leverage, according to an analysis published by Foreign Affairs.

Beijing has repeatedly used its enormous agricultural market to pressure trading partners, while simultaneously investing in biotechnology and agricultural inputs to reduce its own exposure to foreign suppliers.

China is the world’s largest importer of agricultural products, with food imports reaching $215 billion in 2023. Nearly 85 percent of its soybean consumption, more than 67 percent of oil crops and nuts, and nearly 25 percent of beef came from foreign suppliers. Although the import bill has eased somewhat, it has remained above $200 billion annually.

Beijing has increasingly deployed that dependence as an economic weapon. In 2025, China suspended US soybean imports for several months following President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Under a trade truce reached between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in May, China agreed to purchase at least $17 billion a year in US agricultural goods for the remainder of Trump’s term and restored access for some US beef and poultry.

China has used similar measures against other economies. In 2026, Beijing halted imports of several Canadian agricultural products in retaliation for Canadian tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. In late 2025, it suspended more than $86 million in purchases of Japanese seafood and sake after then-Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi indicated that Japan could intervene in a Taiwan conflict.

Yet China’s leverage is constrained by its own food-security challenges. Rising incomes have fuelled demand for meat, dairy and other products, while farmland faces degradation, water shortages, pollution, flooding and the effects of climate change. By 2050, cropland losses from urbanisation and soil degradation could reduce China’s food-production capacity by as much as 18 percent, according to scientific projections.

China has therefore sought to strengthen both domestic production and its control over agricultural technology. Under Xi, Beijing has promoted food self-reliance, expanded farmland protections and embraced genetically modified crops. In 2017, state-owned ChemChina acquired Swiss seed and pesticide company Syngenta for $43 billion, one of China’s largest-ever overseas acquisitions.

Beijing is also seeking influence further up the agricultural supply chain. China has become a leading funder of agricultural research and development and has expanded investment in advanced seed breeding, including biotechnology and AI-enhanced technologies. It has also come to dominate production of several vitamins and amino acids used in animal feed, producing between 80 and 100 percent of some inputs.

The result could be a new form of agricultural power. China may increasingly wield both its vast import market and selected agricultural exports as instruments of geopolitical pressure, creating risks not only for Washington but for food-producing economies around the world.

As competition between China and the West intensifies, agriculture is emerging as a strategic battleground where trade, national security and geopolitics increasingly converge.

By Aghakazim Guliyev