The rising threat of China to liberal democracies fully justifies Australia’s $368 billion AUKUS submarine deal, but there is not yet an inevitability about Chinese aggression towards Taiwan, says Chris Patten, the final governor of Hong Kong.

While the odds were now much higher than just two years ago, Lord Patten says Australia, the US and UK must join other countries in Asia which are victims of Chinese “bullying” to be “verbally restrained in public but clear in private that it would be a disaster for them to take military action”, Lord Patten told The Australian Financial Review.