Tense Northeast Asia makes China`s top 10 world news items in 2010

BEIJING, Dec. 30 (Kyodo) - The tense security situation in Northeast Asia is among the top 10 world news
events in 2010 for China, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Thursday.
A Japan-U.S. joint military drill in early December, the largest scale of its
kind, and South Korea-U.S. military exercises from Nov. 28 to Dec. 1, both of
which took place in the wake of North Korea's deadly shelling of a South Korean
island on Nov. 23, ''further strained the security situation in Northeast
Asia,'' the report said.
In a separate dispatch, Xinhua said the United States' ''return to Asia''
strategy made intra-regional relations ''more complicated and volatile'' in
2010.
''This year signaled Washington's return to Asia, with the United States
frequently flexing its naval muscles in Asian waters and President Barack
Obama's longest foreign trip taking him to several Asian countries,'' the
report said.
The year saw Washington's ''direct and frequent interventions'' into regional
disputes such as a Japan-China row over the Senkaku Islands in the East China
Sea, the deadly sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan and territorial
disputes between Southeast Asian countries and China in the South China Sea, it
said.
''By strongly pursuing a return to Asia, the United States sought to drag more
Asian countries into its sphere of influence,'' Ju Mengjun, head of Xinhua's
Asia-Pacific bureau headquartered in Hong Kong, was quoted as saying.
Other top 10 world news items include the launch of a free trade agreement
between China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations in
January, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April and the sovereign debt
crisis in Europe.
==Kyodo