The protectionism you awarded your strategic industries has led you to where you are today. There are industries which should be open and others that shouldn't be. For me personally, a successful nation should be self sufficient in food, energy, shelter, transportation, healthcare, education and defence. Until we can achieve that i will never consider us properly successful.
Take energy for example, instead of buying energy from China, we are spending money on Chinese developing our energy sector - this i can agree with. Even buying energy short term from foreign suppliers i can agree with, but long term we need a plan to be self sufficient in energy. For a nation like us that means a massive drive for green energy.
Farming is something we are currently self sufficient in. Only a fool would risk that for profits. We have a huge unemployed labour force, we have a growing population, we abundant land which could be farmed, why not do it yourself? Just because someone else can do it better, doesn't mean you stop doing it yourself. What we should be doing is buying Chinese knowledge and expertise to implement in our own farms - to make them more efficient.