The Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has warned that Chinese interests are lining up to take advantage of the coronavirus pandemic by buying “vast swathes of our strategic and manufacturing industries”.
During a Facebook LIVE stream on Wednesday, Mr Farage voiced his serious concerns about Chinese influence on British businesses and infrastructure, “What is happening right now is that Chinese companies and Chinese money are lining up for what they expect to be a ‘fire sale’ of British businesses,” he said.
Citing that Germany had currently put in place new legislation to prevent a hostile foreign take-over of German companies during the pandemic, Mr Farage said: “I fear, we’re going to allow China in to buy up vast swathes of our strategic and manufacturing industries and it just can’t be allowed.
“The problem is the same mob that sold us out to Brussels are now happy to sell out our sovereignty once again to China and this needs a much bigger, higher, level of debate.”
The concerns are only heightened given the past record, with the former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron and former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne allowing Chinese state-run companies to invest in British nuclear power plants.
Just a month ago Chinese firm Jingye Group bought out British Steel raising concerns further about the rising Asian powers influence in the United Kingdom.
Mr Farage said: “For some reason, many of our civil servants, politicians, and Big Business figures seem to be in love with the despicable, barbarous regime who don’t just murder thousands of their own people every year, but put hundreds of thousands in camps… where they’re being re-educated away from their faith to support the Chinese Communist Party.
“It’s not a nice regime. We know they steal intellectual property and we know they have designs to effectively become the global superpower, to take over the world in their own way.”
Mr Farage’s comments come as MPs have launched an emergency House of Commons inquiry into the possibility of Chinese companies stripping the assets of British firms caught up in the pandemic crisis, particularly looking into the high-tech companies which are a fundamental part of the UK’s economy.
Led by Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee Tom Tugendhat, the inquiry would investigate how the Foreign Office could take an active role in blocking Chinese asset-stripping.
The inquiry was prompted by the aborted boardroom coup of UK chip designer Imagination Technologies by associates of Chinese government-backed China Reform Holdings. The take-over was delayed after culture secretary Oliver Dowden intervened.
Mr Farage has previously voiced his concerns about the Western nation’s reliance on Chinese manufacturing, last month he said that the coronavirus pandemic had exposed the developed world’s dependence on China in its supply chains as the United Kingdom and other western powers turned to the red giant for vaccines, masks, and ventilators.
“The West’s supply chains have become too dependent on China,” the Brexit Party said, adding: “To see China now exploiting a crisis that they have caused to spread their influence further and deeper into Europe should send a chill down our spines.”
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