Mar,+Derek+12


 * China Joins the Fight Against Somalia Piracy**

On January 30, 2010, China has agreed to join the international naval operation to fight the piracy off the coast of Somalia. China's forces will also be joining the US naval forces, Nato, and the European Union. Since more and more forces has been joining to fight the cause though there have been more pirate attacks their success rate is lower than it was before. One of the reasons China had joined up with the other forces was because one of their ships were hijacked sometime last October. There was an interesting statistic about the pirates, they were held responsible for 217 acts of piracts in 2009 during which 47 vessels were hijacked and 867 crew members taken hostage. At the end of 2009, Somali pirates held 12 vessels for ransom with 263 crew members as hostages. Barbara Plett, an BBC United Nations correspondant believes that having China will allow more ships to be diverted to the Somali basin, where attacks made by pirates are high.

Sources: BBC:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8486502.stm Reuters AlertNet:http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N2824439.htm

These two articles don't seem to share any similarties at all but I guess they both talk about China joining the fight to fend off Somalian pirates. There were many differences between the two articles. But some of the significant differences were that the Reuters article had quotes from people but the BBC didn't. Also the BBC talked about who China was joining with to fight off the Somalia pirates. Also the last significant difference that I noticed between the two articles were that the Reuters article had specific statistics that the BBC didn't have. The statistics I was refering to were the one about the Somali pirates in 2009 and another one I didn't include in our synopsis.

My opinion on this event is that its great that China decides to join up to fight off the pirates. The more, the merrier because it reduces the amount of successful attacks and the number of actual attacks. It's good that China actually had a reason to join up for the cause because it wouldn't make any sense unless they had a good reason to join the fight. So China joining up against the pirates is a great thing.