Iran in 2009: A year of social upheaval and international defiance (transcript from Deutsche Welle, Germany on 25/12/2009)

'A disputed presidential election, months of unrest and violent protest, and a continuing face-off with the West over it's nuclear plans: Iran faced a year of upheaval in DW-World reviews the most important events'.
In order to review important events in 2009; besides Iran another two countries which one cannot overlooked, one is China dn the other is North Korea. Putting these countries on a broader perspective, we can see a lot of similarity. China has been under authoritarian regime (so called one communist party ruling mechanism) whereas North Korea follow suit.
During 2009 both North Korea and China fomented unrest globally and here are some typical examples per follows:-
1.From the early part of this year, USA has urged North Korea to dismantle (or abolished) the nuclear plant under scrutiny of IAEA; but strongly rejected by them. They demanded the Western power to lift all sanctions on North Korea before negotiations. Actually, China had been dominating the summit for long (including Japan, South Korea, China, USA etc.) on nuclear disarmament but ultimately in vain.
2. China is deploying over 1,500 missiles pointing at Taiwan along their coastline threatening the stability of Taiwan. All over the world knows that they tried to annex Taiwan and treated us as part of them. Meanwhile, they are instigating a war between both sides of the strait which will actually undermined the security of neighbouring Far Eastern countries! With the dramatic uprising/growth on economic power, China is trying to grap natural resources globally; such as investing heaps of cash on natural gas supply from Central Asia, buying up most of the shares on reputable coal mine over Australia, obtaining oil supply from Venezuela etc.
They are most aggressive and wish to manipulate the world for decades to come.
In my view, Iran is not so important as China/North Korea to arous upheaval upheaval even they played a rold in this respect. China and North Korea will also worthwhile for us to closely watch in 2010!