Former UK Conservative Leader Slams Beijing: "Taiwan Has Never Been Part of China!" Criticizes UK Government for Weakness on China | Exclusive Interview
In this episode, we feature an exclusive interview with former leader of the British Conservative Party, Iain Duncan Smith, to discuss in depth the outcomes of the IPAC summit, the geopolitical and economic threats posed by China to global democracies, the crisis of German and European manufacturing being hollowed out by China, the risks of transnational repression sparked by the new Chinese embassy in London, and the importance of UK policy toward Taiwan and the situation in the Taiwan Strait. Iain Duncan Smith firmly stated that Taiwan has never been a part of China and emphasized that if Kyiv falls, Taiwan will fall as well.
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And people like me and others will never allow our government to abandon Taiwan. Taiwan has never been a part of China, whether viewed from history, geography, or any other perspective. And President Xi has made this his number one priority, which is to take back Taiwan. But when you look at what happened to Hong Kong, any empty rhetoric they had about freedom was erased within two years. Now, this worries China, because what we are doing is sending a message to everyone about the real China: it is aggressive, brutal, and murderous.
Hello everyone, welcome to the Freedom is Not Freedom news channel. I am Stan. Today we are attending the annual IPAC summit, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China. Today I have the honor of speaking with Sir Iain Duncan Smith. He is from the British Conservative Party. Thank you very much for agreeing to participate in my program.
And probably every Taiwanese person knows you are from the UK because you are wearing a poppy. It is now the Remembrance period, and every British representative—when you see British people, especially those involved in politics—they wear poppies to commemorate those who fought for the country. Very good. Okay. I am very happy to see parliamentarians from all over the world gathered here to discuss these issues, which are vital to all of our democratic nations. Among all our countries, why do you think an organization like IPAC, and the kind of meetings we are holding today, are important for the UK, for Europe, or for the whole world?
Well, Luke de Pulford and I co-founded IPAC. The two of us concluded that we needed a larger organization. Luke then took on all the hard work, as well as the diligent cultivation outside of politics, to get everyone to join. The reason we founded it at the time was because I was convinced that we are facing a significant and growing threat from China. That is, you know, President Xi himself has made it clear what he expects, what he wants. He wants to be the dominant nation; he wants to replace the United States, and he also wants to replace democracy and the freedom that comes with it. Of course, all of this started with British common law. You know, the right to faith, the freedom of belief, the right to a fair trial, the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, the right to own property—all these things are individual rights, human rights, that you can claim. These came through British common law, were eventually adopted in the United States, and have now become the foundation, the basis upon which all our democratic nations in the free world operate. So, what we see as a result is that China poses a unique and long-term threat, not only to our countries but to the very belief structure that supports the free world itself.
What are your thoughts on the results of IPAC this year? Actually, it is quite good. We welcomed the largest group of people in history. Usually we invite them to attend such conferences, and do not forget, they come from all over the world, so for me, this trip was not that difficult because I jumped on a train and arrived here, but for people coming from South America, it is difficult for two reasons: one is the distance, and the second is that they are under pressure, because China is very eager to get closer to South America and wants to access local raw materials, especially since they are ready to take over Venezuela's oil fields—which is the world's second largest—along with its reserves. So what we are finding is that more and more people from those regions feel threatened by China, and that has always been important because it reinforces our belief that this is the right thing to do, so I think this year will be the most fruitful one in terms of the meetings we have held. Of course, the only fly in the ointment is that five members of the House of Representatives, House members were unable to come because one of them had to recount votes for their midterm election, and the others could not travel on military planes unless all five of them traveled together. This is all quite ambiguous, and I am afraid that is the regrettable part.
Do you think that globally, our understanding of the kind of pressure and the kind of threat that China poses to democratic countries is growing worldwide?
Well, I think so. One point is, I think the people out there, ordinary folks who are not politicians and are not involved in this matter, I think they understand the threat from China, but they have no choice; they buy Chinese products because they are cheaper. I think politicians are the ones who are clueless, and that is true within my own party, in my parliament, and here as well. If you talk to Jan Patanosta, he will tell you that there is indeed resistance, a reluctance to the idea of not doing business with China, and concerns about China, but the truth is that we have been dodging this issue, because China seems to offer the governments of the free world the opportunity to grow their economies, theoretically because China will come to invest, or sell cars, or sell whatever they sell. The downside of doing this is that it will not make your economy grow, because you get almost nothing in return—completely nothing. They are made in China, or made through China's allies, and they tend to be made by slave labor. Take solar panels as an example: products made in Xinjiang contain polysilicon, and polysilicon is actually produced in Xinjiang by slave labor. We know this, so all these abuses are happening. China also subsidizes their industries, and the most dangerous thing about this is that China has now shifted from a normal economy—where the domestic market was the largest and exports were second—and now their production is based on the demand that existed before the economic collapse for their domestic audience, but the domestic economy has already collapsed, so they still maintain the same production level, stockpiling it, and now are ready to flood the markets of Europe and the United States, and the entire free world, and this is because they have transformed themselves into, as President Xi said, an export-driven economy. And the result of this is hollowing out all our normal industries. I mean, you just have to look at Germany; I think about 15,000 people were laid off, from manufacturing jobs, manufacturing in the automotive industry—recently Volkswagen's factories, 30,000 people just lost their jobs, an average of 15,000 per week—which is devastating to Germany. Germany used to have a very large industry, a manufacturer, and they handed it over to China. I mean, this is the stupidest move of their lives; they handed it over to China, thinking they would build it later and then assemble it, returning to Germany to lower costs—the best gearboxes, the best engines, all that technology has fallen into China's hands, so they no longer need Germany. But they are doing the same thing all across Europe; they are hollowing out all our industries, leaving us completely vulnerable to them. And Xi Jinping has made it very clear, which is why I think this is such an astonishing threat. Xi has said that business always goes hand in hand with the military; every decision they make is strategic, aimed at giving the military an advantage. And when you think about that, you realize how dangerous this is. Europe is now almost incapable of manufacturing anything below a certain scale, and the UK is part of that too, and we are not doing well, and we have very little time to rectify all of this, and it is extremely dangerous.
Looking at the UK, what do you think the current government has misunderstood or understood, and what has gone wrong in its policy toward China?
I think that when the current government came to power, it happened to be the exact moment when the previous administration—which had previously pursued very similar policies—finally changed its stance and recognized the fact that China poses a threat. We have a mechanism called the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme, and that is used to classify whether a country falls into the category of a challenge or a threat. The higher tier is reserved for countries deemed threats, and we have consistently advocated for placing China in that tier, but the government has been unwilling to do so. They fell into the exact same trap as the previous administration, which wouldn't do it for the simple reason that they thought they could get more business as long as they didn't push China too hard. This has always been a massive vulnerability of ours, and I think the same applies to Europe. So the reality now is that we are scrambling to catch up, but the position we are in simply does not allow us to do so. We have never let our military capabilities sink to the level that the UK is at now, and restoring them requires an enormous amount of effort and money. Therefore, the government simply doesn't talk about when they are going to do it. Their current defense review is extremely vague on this; they talk about, you know, having a military stronger than anyone else, which is not true. And as you know, we are going through this war in Ukraine—Russia invaded Ukraine, and Ukraine has performed exceptionally well, utilizing a lot of new technologies and novel ways of using devices like drones. We need to learn from the Ukrainians, and if we want to bypass the long production cycles and get straight to manufacturing, the whole of Europe must adopt what Ukraine has been doing, and we have been very reluctant to do so. So we have to spend this money now, and we have to spend it fast.
And look at these espionage and infiltration activities currently being carried out overseas by the Chinese Communist Party. Over the past two years, the new embassy—the new embassy of the People's Republic of China—this issue has been reported everywhere in British news. What do you think the main danger of this embassy is? Do you think there is any way to actually stop it, building a spy station right in the center of London? We are stepping up our efforts and still trying to stop it; we launched a campaign against it, but the British government let it pass smoothly. We are now questioning this, and there have been delays in the process. Can we pull it off? I don't know. Saying that we can stop it is a very weak argument because some things are not being told to us, some things are not clear, and they have gotten themselves into a mess over this deal. But my view is that we can still stop it, and we must stop it. I mean, it is going to become the absolute largest embassy of all nations in Europe, and by a huge margin—even bigger than the US embassy in London, which is already massive. It will house even more personnel, and wherever China goes, when they expand the size of their embassies, they always face accusations of massively escalating transnational repression, vastly intensified accusations of transnational repression. So there are many Chinese people, people from Hong Kong, who fled China at the time, before the crackdown began and before they finally gained complete control, and they are all living here. The problem we face now is that these people currently feel extremely vulnerable and helpless, and China is carrying out some kind of horrific tactics attempting to coerce people back to China. They even show them videos of their family members, you know, being abused and things like that, so this is extremely difficult for them. If we ultimately go down this path, it will be an absolute disaster for us, I truly believe that. There are also the Uyghurs, Tibetans, and even Taiwanese—well, now even Southern Mongolians as well. All these groups are facing either repression, genocide, or both. For the Uyghurs, it is genocide; for the Tibetans, I think it is also genocide; but for the other groups, all of this is looming. It hasn't happened yet, but they will eventually end up on the exact same path as the Uyghurs. So this is dangerous; we cannot turn a blind eye, but we have turned a blind eye, and we should have done something much earlier. So we have a problem: China has one set of rules, and everyone else has another, yet China gets away with it because we consume Chinese goods. Therefore, the government has been quite incompetent, really, just over the past few years. But yes, this is a dangerous situation; we are completely tied down by them, we can do nothing, while they are able to do the things that they can do better.
Taiwan is also one of the hot topics over these years. Regarding IPAC, what are your views on the current situation and the relationship between the UK and Taiwan? And why do you think Taiwan is important to the UK?
Well, I think those relationships are reasonable, but what we must focus on is that the British government has been quite incompetent. I usually wouldn't say this about other countries, but I think we have been useless because they have gone back to square one, even though we originally had progress. During the previous government, we were back to square one, and the argument they keep making is that China is important for economic growth. But China won't give you growth; what they give you is a massive amount of their own products. They aren't interested. Now, regarding investment in China, they have already passed that stage; it has completely shifted. What they are doing now, strategically, is hollowing us out—that is, industries that no longer function. You know, through cyber warfare, ensuring all of that—our websites are flooded with hostile, conflicting concepts, as well as things about Israel, you know, and so on. So they are doing everything they can to ensure we are in a position where we cannot cooperate, in order to provide support when necessary, and support may become necessary, and to a certain extent, this has been working. Many people are blinded by China, which is why a group like this is so important, for instance, the cross-party Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). I call it "all-party," and it truly is. Most importantly, it is very helpful because it tells everyone what the problem is. We are not afraid, nor are we biased. We don't care which party you belong to; we have members from the Labour Party, we have members from Scotland, we have Conservative members, we have Liberal members here, so we cross [party lines], and we set it up to be spread everywhere. Now, this worries China because what we are doing is sending a message to everyone about the real China: it is aggressive, brutal, and murderous.
I was laughing the other day because Mbappé made his comments—yes, Mao Zedong, the Chinese dictator—but that is just what China does. They cut off every investment, and then Spain suddenly felt like it was losing everything. They didn't know what to do. He was under pressure and forced to apologize. Apologize for what? Mao Zedong was not just a dictator; he was a murderous guy. He killed over five million Chinese people in his pursuit of power—I mean, I'm sorry—and let over forty million starve to death. My god, so he was a brutal dictator. But of course, in China, you cannot question China's past, or they will fly into a rage and then come after you. So, unfortunately, he ended up in that situation and was then forced—the sight was truly ugly—to apologize to them. So, yes, we expressed our support, just to show how right he was, but you know, this is China's way; they control everything.
And since my audience is mostly Taiwanese, do you have anything you would like to say to the people of Taiwan? Stay there, stay there. You have friends who believe in freedom and the right to choose. People like me and others will never allow our governments to abandon Taiwan. Taiwan has never been a part of China, whether from a historical, geographical, or any other perspective. And President Xi has made this his number one priority: to take back Taiwan. But when you look at what happened to Hong Kong, any empty rhetoric they had about freedom was erased within two years. So I wish them all the best, but when I go around talking about Taiwan, I say to Americans—those Americans who have been reluctant to aid Ukraine—I point out to them that the road to Taiwan goes through Kyiv. If Kyiv falls, Taiwan will also fall, because China will see our lack of courage or commitment. Yes, that provocation is weakness. Americans know this, but they just refuse to admit it. So this is not a European war, just as Taiwan is not an East Asian war. If Taiwan falls, what will the cost be to the global economy? Ten trillion dollars? It would be like a winter for the global economy, and the situation would be far worse than when Russia invaded Ukraine. So we have economic, legal, and moral responsibilities to ensure that Taiwan exists as a free nation. Thank you very much, sir. It is my honor. Iain Duncan Smith of the Conservative Party, former leader of the Conservative Party. Thank you, sir. It is my honor. Nice to meet you. Okay, thank you.
Hi everyone and welcome to the conclusion we needed a bigger organization. Luke has gone on to do all the hard work and the hard graft outside of politics to get everybody in. The reason we set it up at the time was because I became convinced that we face a significant and growing threat from China, who's you know President Xi Jinping himself has said categorically what he expects what he wants. He wants to become the dominant nation. He wants to replace the USA and he also wants to replace democracy and the consequential freedoms that exist started of course in English common law. You know right to worship, freedom of worship the right to a trial, the right to be innocent until proven guilty, the right to own property. All these sort of things are personal rights, human rights you can argue that came through English common law, and eventually became adopted in the USA, and now been the basis on which all our countries who are democratic in the free world operate. So what we see therefore is China poses a distinct and permanent threat not just us as nations, but to the very belief structure that underpins the free world.
What do you think about the outcome of this year's IPAC? Pretty good really. We've had the biggest group of people that we would normally have to attend these, and bear in mind that they've come from all over the world. So for me, it wasn't such a difficult journey because I jumped on a train and I got here. But for people coming from South America, it's difficult for two reasons. One is the distance and the second thing is they're under pressure because China is very keen to get closer to South America and to avail itself of its raw materials. Particularly they were ready to take over the Venezuelan oil fields, second largest in the world, and the reserves that is. So what we discover is that more and more people coming from those areas who they feel threatened by China. And that's always important because it reinforces our belief that this was the right thing to do. So I think this year will be the most productive year we've had for meetings. The one downside of course was that the five members of the House of Representatives couldn't come because one of them had a recount on their midterm elections. And the others couldn't come by military aircraft unless there were five of them. It's all rather vague. That's I'm afraid the pity of it. Do you think that globally our understanding of what kind of pressure and what kind of threat is China posing to the democracies, do you think that this understanding is growing globally?
Well I think it is. The one thing about it is I think it's people out there ordinary people who are not politicians and not involved in this, I think they get the threat from China, but they left no choice. They buy Chinese products because it's cheaper. Politicians I think are the ones that are confused about it in my part, in my parliament and in here.
If you talk to Jan Patanosta, he will tell you that there is resistance to the idea of not doing business with China and worrying about them. But the truth is that we are dodging around it because China seems to offer to governments in the free world the opportunity to grow their economies because China will come theoretically and invest or sell cars or sell whatever they do.
The downside of that is it doesn't grow your economy because you get next to no rewards for it at all. They're made in China or they're made via China's allies. They're often made by slave labor. Take for example solar arrays. Made in Xinjiang have polysilicon in them. Polysilicon is in fact produced in Xinjiang by slave labor. We know that.
So there are all these abuses that take place and China also subsidizes their industries. The most dangerous thing about this is that China now has moved from being a normal economy, so domestic audience was the largest followed by exports. They're now producing at the rate of their domestic audience demand that existed before their economy crashed and it has crashed domestically.
So they're still producing at the same level, stockpiling it and now ready to flood the markets of Europe and the United States and the free world generally. And that's because they have turned themselves as President Xi said into an export economy. And what that has done is hollow out all of our normal industries.
I mean you only have to look at Germany. I think there are about 15,000 people being laid off from work in the manufacturing industry of automotive industry. The recent Volkswagen's factory, 30,000 people just lost their jobs. It's 15,000 a week on average, which is devastating to Germany which had a very big industry, a manufacturer, which they gave over to China.
I mean the stupidest move ever made in their life, they gave to China. They thought they would then build it and then they would assemble it back in Germany cutting costs. Best transmissions best engines, all that technology has gone to China. So they don't need Germany anymore, but they're doing it all over Europe. They're hollowing out all our industries to leave us very vulnerable to them.
And Xi made it very clear, and this is why I think this is such a staggering threat, Xi said that the commercial always goes hand in hand with the military. Every decision they make is strategic and aimed at allowing the military to get the upper hand. And when you think about that, you realize how dangerous this is, that Europe now is almost incapable of making anything under scale.
Britain's part of that too and we've not been great. And we have a very short time to put that right and it's very dangerous.
Looking at the United Kingdom, what do you think the current government is misunderstanding or understanding wrongly in terms of its China policies?
I think the present government came in just as the last government, which had pursued a very similar policy, has finally come round to the fact that China posed a threat. We have this thing called the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, and that's meant to define whether a country is difficult or a threat or whatever. The upper tier is for those that are seen as threats. And we've been arguing for China to be placed in that, but the government won't do it.
And they've fallen foul of exactly the same problem with the last government. The last government wouldn't do it because of one very simple reason, they thought they were going to get more business if they didn't persecute China. And that's been a very big Achilles' heel for us and I think also for Europe.
So the reality is now we're having to play catch up, and we're not in a position to do it. We have never let our forces fall to the level they are now in the UK. And it's going to take a huge effort and money to get them back up. So the government doesn't talk about when they're going to do their defense review now, they're very vague about it. What they talk about is you know having stronger forces than anybody else, which is not true.
And you know we have this war going on in Ukraine by Russia invading Ukraine has been fantastic, and there's so much new technology and new use of devices like drones etc. We need to learn from the Ukrainians, if we're going to short circuit shortcut the system to production. That's all over Europe has got to be taking on what Ukraine has been doing. And we've been very reluctant to do so. So we have to spend that money now and fast.
And looking at the espionage and infiltration activities that are being conducted by the Chinese Communist Party abroad, during these two years the new embassy of the People's Republic of China, it's all over the news in the United Kingdom. What do you think are the main dangers of this embassy? And do you think anything can be done to actually such a spy center right in the center of London?
We're up to trying to stop it still. We campaigned against it, but the British government waved it through. We're now challenging that. There's a delay in that process. Whether we can do it or not I don't know. It's a very tenuous point to make that we could block it because certain things were not said to us, certain things were not clear, and they got themselves in a mess over the deal. But my view is we could still stop it and we need to stop it. I mean it will be the biggest embassy for any country in the whole of Europe by a long way, bigger than the American embassy in London which is huge. It will have more people in and wherever China goes, when they increase the size of their embassy, they always face charges of massively stepping up transnational repression, charges of massively stepping up transnational repression.
So there are a lot of Chinese, Hong Kong Chinese, who fled China at the time when they started their crackdown before they eventually just took complete control. They all live here, and the problem we've got is that those people feel terribly vulnerable now. And China is carrying out sort of terrible exercises in trying to bully people to coming back to China. And they show them videos of their families and you know being maltreated and that sort of thing. So it's very tough for them, and if we end up going down this road then it will be an unmitigated disaster for us really I think.
And also the Uighurs Tibetans, and even Taiwanese. Well even the outer Mongolians now. All of those groups are facing either a crackdown and/or a genocide. With the Uighur it's a genocide. With the Tibetans I think it's genocide. But with the others it's coming, and not yet but they will come down that same road that the Uighur Uighur did. So that is dangerous. We can't turn a blind eye, but we do. That would have been worth us doing this earlier. So we have a problem. China there's a rule for China, a rule for everybody else, and China gets away with it all because we use China goods. And so government has been pretty hopeless really in the last few years. But yeah, it's a dangerous position to be in. We are completely locked into them. There's nothing we can do they can do that they can't do better.
Taiwan was also one of the hot topics during these years. IPAC, what do you think about the current UK-Taiwan relationships? And why do you think Taiwan is important for the United Kingdom? Well, I think they're reasonable. The relationships are reasonable. But the thing we've got to focus on is the British government has been pretty hopeless. I didn't wouldn't normally say that in another country, but I think we've been hopeless because they've gone back to square one where we were making progress before with the last government, we went back to square one and what they keep coming out with is China is important for growth.
But China doesn't give you growth. What they give you is a lot of their product. They're not interested now in investments in China. They've gone through that. This is wholly moved and now what they're doing strategically is hollowing us out. That is industry no longer functioning, you know, making sure through cyber warfare that all our sites are filled with antagonistic concepts about each other and Israel, you know all that stuff. So they are they are doing their level best to make sure that we're in a no-fit position to support as and when support may become necessary. And that in to a degree has been working. A lot of people are taken in by China and that's why it's so important how a group like the All-Party Parliamentary Group on China which is IPAC, Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China. I call it All-Party which it is. The main thing is it's helpful because it tells everybody what the problem. We don't have fear or favor. We don't care which party you're on. We've got members from the Labour Party, we've got members from Scotland, we've got Conservatives, we've got Liberals here. So we cross, so we set that up to be everywhere like that.
Now that worries China because what we're doing is sending a message to everybody about the real China. The real China is aggressive, brutal, and murderous. And I was laughing the other day because Mbappe came out with his comments. Yes yeah. Mao Zedong. The Chinese dictator. But China does that. They shut down every bit of investment and suddenly Spain thinks they're losing all of this they don't know what to do. He comes under pressure to apologize. Apologize for what? Mao Zedong wasn't just a dictator, he was a murdering so-and-so. He killed over 5 million people, Chinese people in his pursuit of power. I mean I'm sorry. And starved more than 40 million people to death. God.
So he was a brutal dictator. But of course China, you cannot question China's past, otherwise they get furious and then they have a go at you. So he got caught in that I'm afraid and then was forced rather ghastly sight to have to apologize to them. So yeah. We we've done a supporting position on just to explain how right he was. But you know this is what China does, they control everything.
And as most of my viewers are Taiwanese, do you have anything to say to the Taiwanese people? Keep there stay there. You have friends who believe in freedom and the right to choose. And people like myself and others will not allow our governments to abandon Taiwan. was never a part of China, historically geographically whatever. And President Xi has made it his number-one thing to get Taiwan back. But when you see what happened to Hong Kong, any platitudes they make about freedoms will be scrubbed away within two years. And so I wish them well, but as I keep going around talking about Taiwan I say to the Americans who have been reluctant to help in Ukraine. I make the point to them, the road to Taiwan runs through Kyiv. If Kiev goes down Taiwan will go down. Because China will see that we lack the courage or the commitment. Yeah and that's provocative weakness. The Americans know this, but they just won't admit it. So it's it's not a European war any more than Taiwan is an Eastern Asian war. If Taiwan goes down the cost to the the cost of the global economy would be what ten trillion dollars, which is like global economic winter. It would be far worse than when Russia invaded Ukraine. So we have an economic we have a legal and we have a humanitarian responsibility to make sure Taiwan exists as a free nation.
Thank you so much sir. Pleasure. Iain Duncan Smith from Conservative Party, former leader of the Conservative Party. Thank you sir. Pleasure. Very good to see you. Okay thanks