Asia Observer is a portal to Asia, focusing on news, politics and society. The web site was founded by the Norwegian journalist John Einar Sandvand in 1999. Mr. Sandvand was at that time Asia correspondent for the leading newspaper in Norway, Aftenposten. He decided to make a web site that could be his start page in his work as journalist covering the region. That included links to all major news sources, automatic updated news headlines and guides to useful sources about each country.

Asia Observer has changed quite a bit since then. But still it tries to be a portal for people with a particular interest in how the societies in the Asian region develop.

The web site is visited by more than 1000 people every day. Statistics show that the visitors are pretty much evenly divided between North America, Europe and Asia. However, far away as they may live, they all share a common interest in Asia. Many of our visitors are journalists, students or academic researchers.

Asia Observer was completely redesigned in January 2007. It is now a much more interactive site, depending on contributions from the members of its community of knowledgeable Asia hands.

As a community it is still small, but growing. And you will find that is a very friendly community. Why don't you also become a member of the Asia Observer family?