Month: August 2011

  • Five Years of Transpacifica: Five New Japanese Prime Ministers

    I’m in transit these days, moving for the time being from Seattle to New York. This is a perfect opportunity to look back on what I’ve written in this space since I started here just over five years ago, on Aug. 18, 2006. Looking back, I found some early speculation about what Aso Taro, then…

  • Pics: U.S. VP Joe Biden visits in Beijing neighborhood eatery

    U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Beijing is designed to lay the groundwork for later meetings between U.S. officials and rising leader Xi Jinping, who is currently Biden’s Chinese counterpart. Opting for a local favorite rather than a sterile array of table cloths and serving dishes, Biden made some waves on Weibo and in…

  • Foreign media depending on Chinese microblogs [graph]

    Readers of English-language news on China have likely noticed a surge in references to netizens, microblogs, and a specific microblogging service called Sina Weibo. Angel Hsu noted this was increasing, and I thought I’d check to see how much. For a really rough measure of how much foreign reporters are depending on Chinese microblogs to…

  • Disqus commenting restored

    For the very few of you who were frustrated by Transpacifica’s recent Disqus outage, apologies. As far as I can tell, functionality is now restored. –Graham

  • As airfare soars, transpacific data prices plummet

    Anyone who has watched airfare prices between the United States and East Asia in recent years has noticed a pronounced rise. A year ago, this correspondent found it more affordable to fly from Beijing to Istanbul and then Istanbul to New York instead of a direct flight. Data prices from Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo…