‘Ton of bricks’: Nigel Farage party’s China warning to Xi Jinping

Nigel Farage’s upstart political party says the West must learn the lessons of the Russia-Ukraine war and make it clearer to President Xi Jinping that any move on Taiwan would lead to huge economic punishment.

Mr Farage drove Britain’s Brexit decision and led his latest political party, Reform, to breakthrough success at the last election, claiming five seats in Britain’s first-past-the-post system.

Since then, he has kicked one MP out of the party, but at the local level, surged ahead of Labour and the Conservatives to claim the most seats in this year’s council elections.

Reform is on top in the polls, prompting speculation they could even be in a position to form government, or play a kingmaker role at the next election, although Britain is not due to head to the ballot box until 2029.

Mr Farage largely campaigns on migration, including highlighting illegal boat crossings in the English Channel, but has also enjoyed a boost in popularity because of his Donald Trump-esque style of plain speaking, and populist policies, including supporting continuing welfare spending but scrapping net zero carbon mitigation policies.

His deputy — businessman and Member for the once-safe-Conservative seat of Boston and Skegness Richard Tice — volunteered to stand aside as leader ahead of the 2024 election to make way for Mr Farage’s success in frontline politics.

He is one of the Reform movement’s most powerful and influential figures and also serves as the party’s foreign affairs spokesman.

Speaking exclusively to the Latika Takes podcast for The Nightly, Reform’s Mr Tice said he was “very anxious” about a range of the Chinese Communist Party’s behaviours, including President Xi Jinping’s threat to take over Taiwan within two years.

“We are very anxious about multiple areas of what China is doing, and I think we need to be much stricter on it,” he said.

He said the UK government had been “too permissive” towards the CCP since its election and cited the visits made by Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband to China within Labour’s first year of power.

“Yes, I think they have been so far,” he said.

“The number of their visits to China surprises me.

“This is on the back of a Tory government that for 14 years was far too permissive of China.”

He said he had never believed in the “Golden Era” of Sino-British relations pursued by David Cameron, who served as Prime Minister from 2010 until the Brexit referendum defeat in 2016, and then came back as Foreign Secretary in the dying days of Rishi Sunak’s premiership.

The Tories gradually toughened their stance but were forced by the United States into copying Australia’s move of blocking Chinese telecommunication vendor Huawei from supplying the UK’s 5G networks.

“Let’s remember it was President Trump that forced Prime Minister Boris Johnson to get rid of Huawei out of critical national infrastructure,” Mr Tice said.

“Nigel and I were saying it at the time; we were tearing our hair out on this stuff.

“It was so obvious.”

The Ukraine lesson for Taiwan

Mr Tice said Russia’s war in Ukraine “may suit China” and that it must be made clear that this placed Beijing on the wrong side of history. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Europe’s chief diplomat Kaja Kallas that China had no interest in ending the Russia-Ukraine war, as it would free the United States to pay more attention to the Indo-Pacific.

China has deepened its relationship with Russia and sells it components that can be used in weapons and drones to kill Ukrainians, and also buys cheap Russian oil, helping prop up Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war economy.

Mr Tice said President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine also served as a lesson for how to prevent China from trying the same thing on Taiwan.

“You’ve got to make it clear to China, early doors, we should be doing this,” he said.

“And I don’t think we’ve done enough it to make clear that — it would not end well for China in a variety of ways.

“They need to know that the West would come down on them like a ton of bricks.

“That may not just … be militarily.

“That may be in terms of trade and economics, cooperation research.

“It may be stopping all students, all visas, who knows what that might be, but a whole raft of sanctions.”

In 2022, following the COVID pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mr Tice, then leader of Reform, funded and authored a paper for the hawkish think tank The Henry Jackson Society that argued that Putin’s imperialist desires for Ukraine ultimately meant the threat of sanctions had a limited effect.

He said the same could apply to Taiwan and China.

But he said better preparations could be made to make Beijing think again, by warning businesses that they might have to decouple from China and helping them get ready for that scenario.

“I would … say to British companies, you need to diversify away from China as a low-cost production centre,” he said.

He cited the United States’ policy, begun under President Joe Biden and continued under President Trump, of paying subsidies to the Taiwanese chip-maker to build factories in the United States as a top example of “derisking” from China.

“ I think we need to be saying to lots of corporates, you need to de-risk from China and you need to have a plan B and a plan C,” he said.

“China is most concerned over the very long term about the money, economic strength, and winning the economic battles.

“Well, we can play them at their own game.”

Asked how Reform would attempt to reindustrialise Britain, he said the party would scrap “Net stupid Zero” carbon reduction policies to allow for cheaper energy.

But he stopped short of saying the UK should commit to fighting in any conflict over Taiwan if the US and Australia were involved, saying strategic ambiguity was the best approach.

We oppose the mega-embassy

Mr Tice equally avoided saying whether he would place China on the Enhanced tier of the UK’s Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, which would require lobbyists working on behalf of the CCP to undergo greater checks.

And although he expressed concerns about the impact of social media on teenagers, he did not say whether he thought the Chinese-owned platform TikTok was a vehicle for disinformation and should be divested from Chinese ownership.

Both Mr Farage and Mr Trump have bragged about finding new supporters on TikTok, especially amongst younger voters. President Trump has repeatedly stalled enforcing a law passed just before he became President that forces the platform to part ways with its Chinese owners or shut down in the US.

He was, however, specific about opposing a giant new embassy that the Chinese have proposed in the heart of London.

Chinese dissidents in the UK fear it will serve as a major hub for spying and transnational repression. In 2022, Hong Kong protestor Bob was dragged by Chinese consulate staff onto the grounds of the Chinese consulate in Manchester and beaten by five men.

The London council responsible for approving China’s plans for what would be Europe’s biggest embassy on the five-acre site, rejected the proposal in 2022, partly on security grounds.

But it was raised during Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s first phone call with President Xi Jinping, and the Labour leader agreed to review it at the governmental level. It is now a matter of days before the government decides whether or not to permit the Chinese to build.

Mr Tice questioned why a mega-embassy in London was even necessary for the Chinese.

“What’s that all about?” he said.

“Some of the stuff I’ve read is pretty uncomfortable.

“The quality of the location, the strategic importance of the location, the risks that they could use it in some way to destabilise parts of the City of London, probably through hacking, through tech, for example.

“And what’s wrong with their existing embassy? Why do they need a bigger embassy?”

China accused “anti-China forces” of trying to restrict its diplomatic expansion in the UK, but has blocked Britain from building a larger embassy in Beijing.