"The truth of it is if we are really going to get tough with China and we want to try and hurt China's ability to become this global superpower then we're going to have to face the facts that in the short term this will cost us too," he said.

"It’s not something we can do that’s cost-free; it isn’t cost-free but, in terms of strategy, in terms of geopolitics, this is the biggest geopolitical struggle since the fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years ago."

Farage was optimistic the public would be willing to pay more for non-Chinese made goods likening it to the widespread support for better animal welfare standards leading to higher meat prices.

"We already make these choices now," he said.

If the UK doesn't want to be beholden to China, then drugs like antibiotics may need to be manufactured in Britain, or in a friendly country lie Switzerland, he said.

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Farage said the pandemic had accelerated the public's desire to rethink the new globalist order, but this had started with the vote to leave the European Union and the election of Donald Trump as US President in 2016.

"This is a continuation of the same phenomenon ... many of the debates we're having now about what is a nation-state? What is national security? Yep, it's part of the same game."

US-China relations have worsened since the coronavirus pandemic emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan, as have Trump's own political fortunes.

Trump has repeatedly referred to it as the Wuhan virus and lashed out at Beijing for not stopping the disease from leaving China. The administration has declared Hong Kong no longer autonomous while Chinese propaganda has increased its criticism and mocking of Trump's domestic response to the pandemic, with the United States death toll topping 100,000 last week, making it the highest in the world.

But Farage, who is personally close to Trump, warned against writing off his chances of re-election saying he was needed to stop China "effectively taking over the world".

"If he wasn't there who would take the lead on this?" Farage said. "Certainly not, certainly not Joe Biden. And Australia on its own is going to find it very difficult to do it; Boris Johnson's going to need a hell of a lot of kicking to do it; and the European Union are, I'm afraid just appeasers, of China at every level.

"In terms of stopping China effectively taking over the world - whatever people think his faults may be - the reelection of Trump is actually central to it."