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Visiting US President Barack Obama on Wednesday said his administration will boost US military activities in Australia from 2012, as Washington "steps up its commitment" in the Asia-Pacific region.

The deployment of 200 to 250 US Marines will begin next year and grow to 2,500, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard told a joint news conference with Obama in Canberra.

The US troops will be deployed in Australia's northern port of Darwin, just 820 km from Indonesia, close to the South China Sea.

In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin on Wednesday said renewing historic alliances might not be the best option. The United States and Australia have been defense treaty partners for 60 years, and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just wrapped up a visit to the Philippines, a former US colony that also has a 60-year-old security pact with Washington.

"Faced with a gloomy global economy, whether broadening military alliances is an effective model for regional integration is worth discussing," he said during a regular news briefing in Beijing.

Liu's remark came as Obama said the US neither fears nor wants to exclude China from its economic alliances in the Asia-Pacific, and just after Clinton reassured Manila that "the United States will always be in the corner of the Philippines, and we will stand and fight with you".

Washington will also "update" relationships with its three other treaty-bound allies in the region - Japan, South Korea and Thailand, Clinton said last week in Hawaii, while noting that the alliances "are the fulcrum for our efforts in the Asia-Pacific". Clinton arrived in Thailand late on Wednesday.

"We need a serious discussion within our politics and our nation about whether a bigger US military presence is a good idea or not. We shouldn't fall into the ritualistic description of the 'special relationship' when hard thinking about the pros and cons of closer military relations is necessary," Brendon O'Connor, a professor with the United States Studies Center at University of Sydney, said in an article on The Conversation website.

Obama and Clinton will head to Bali, Indonesia, this weekend for a regional forum, in which the US expects a "candid discussion" of territorial disputes in the South China Sea. The meeting will be attended by members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), as well as China, Japan and South Korea. The US will take part for the first time.

Questions:

1; What will the number of US Marines grow to by next year?

2. Where will the US troops be deployed?

3. How many times has the US taken part in an ASEAN meeting?

Answers:

1. 2,500.

2. Darwin.

3. This is the first time.

（中國日報網英語點津 Helen 編輯）

About the broadcaster:

Emily Cheng is an editor at China Daily. She was born in Sydney, Australia and graduated from the University of Sydney with a degree in Media, English Literature and Politics. She has worked in the media industry since starting university and this is the third time she has settled abroad - she interned with a magazine in Hong Kong 2007 and studied at the University of Leeds in 2009.