Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has warned that having Huawei involved in Britain’s 5G network may be the price to be paid for accepting medical equipment from China.
On Friday, communist party-ruled China sent the UK 300 ventilators, as the country remains thousands short of the estimated 18,000 needed to cope with the peak of the coronavirus pandemic. Michael Gove, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, thanked “the Chinese government for their support in securing that capacity”.
China has avoided taking responsibility for the outbreak which originated in its country. However, nations affected by the deadly respiratory virus continue to accept donations and even buy medical equipment from China, leaving some like Mr Farage in shock and warning China’s recent “largesse” will come at a price.
Mr Farage is a vocal opponent of Huawei helping to develop Britain’s next-generation telecommunications infrastructure and has warned it threatens the Anglosphere Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network. He said on LBC on Sunday that while the UK should want to get ventilators from everywhere that it can, “I wonder what the price of these ventilators is? I wonder if it’s the continuance of China inside our 5G network?”
He continued: “Let’s just remind ourselves: this is a communist dictatorship that murders thousands of its own people every year; that imprisons hundreds of thousands of people with different religions in reeducation camps.
“These people are not our friends. The administrators in charge are not our friends. They intend to dominate the world and now, having started this crisis, they seem to be dishing out largesse: equipment to Italy, equipment to Serbia, donations to South Africa, and now ventilators, 300 ventilators coming in to the United Kingdom.
“I really, really despair. I utterly despair that so much of our establishment seems, now, with the European Union fading away as our closest link, to think that China’s our future. God help us if it is.”
In recent weeks, Mr Farage has said that he hopes Prime Minister Boris Johnson will rethink his decision to allow Huawei, which critics say is controlled by the communist Chinese government, access to Britain’s 5G networks.
Neoconservative think tank The Henry Jackson Society released a report on Sunday that recommended Western nations sue China. The report said that if Beijing is found guilty of lying to the world about the risk of the virus, they could be liable to pay out trillions of pounds in compensation.
While Britain has thanked China for their help in securing 300 ventilators, the UK’s medical experts have also revealed in recent days that millions of coronavirus tests from China do not work, joining Turkey, Spain, and the Netherlands for having received faulty coronavirus-fighting equipment from the outbreak’s home country.