The world cannot afford to ignore Taiwan’s security and allowing the nation to succumb to China’s authoritarian rule would have global repercussions, former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison said yesterday.

“Taiwan matters to the world,” Morrison said in his keynote address at the Taipei Security Dialogue, adding that maintaining the “status quo” across the Taiwan Strait is essential to the “security, prosperity and sovereignty” of countries such as Australia, the US and Japan.

“If Taiwan were to be forcibly placed under the authoritarian rule of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party], there would not be a corner of the globe that would be unaffected,” said Morrison, who was prime minister from 2018 to 2022.