Australian academic Prof. James Laurenseson says Australia and the United States need to increase their engagement with Pacific island nations if they want to combat the rise of China in the region. Laurenceson, who is the director of Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), told The Epoch Times that the United States and Australia must maintain trust and strong ties in the Pacific to ensure that any Chinese civil infrastructure facilities don’t become military ones in the future. “Simply building a facility doesn’t mean China can control it or launch military assaults from it,” Laurenceson said. “America could reasonably be concerned given it disrupts the status quo, but frankly, the weight of American outright military bases close to China would still dramatically outweigh that of potential ‘dual-use’ facilities built by China.” This comes as opposition leaders in the Pacific nation of Kiribati say China had plans to …