World Expo offers Chinese people opportunities to better understand other cultures and models of development.

In just two years after China opened its doors to the world for the Beijing Olympic Games, the nation is throwing them even wider for this year's World Expo in Shanghai.

And if the conclusion is true that the Beijing Olympics helped the world learn more about a fast-growing China, then the six-month expo in the booming city of Shanghai will have a somewhat opposite effect: It will give Chinese people the rare opportunity to better understand the world.

Like the Beijing Olympics, the World Expo is a result of China's unremitting efforts to push its reform and opening-up policy forward. It also shows China's goodwill as well as the international community's enthusiasm for the world's largest developing nation.

According to estimates by Shanghai authorities, the exhibition is expected to bring more than 70 million visitors, 3.5 million of whom will be foreigners while the rest will be Chinese. The expo is expected to boost the local economy in the host city and in adjacent regions, similar to what occurred in the regions neighboring the Japanese city of Osaka, the host of the 1970 World Expo.

The 66.5 million Chinese visitors, or five percent of the country's population, will have the opportunity to experience what other countries are like and appreciate the development of the global economy.

Hopefully Chinese people, as hosts of the expo, better understand the trends of development in other countries, especially in metropolises. And hopefully, they apply some of the ideas they've learned to the construction of our modern cities with a focus on ecology, knowledge and humanitarianism.

One of the important opportunities for Chinese people are the vast riches of culture and technology on display from throughout the world. The ultimate stage for technological innovations, the expo is filled with beautifully designed pavilions built by participating nations to show their unique cultures and ideas. It provides a massive platform for Chinese people to grasp the concept of urbanization and models of development in other countries. This will help them better realize that the development of any city in the 21st century takes full account of its people, boosts the local economy and improves the living conditions of its inhabitants.

Chinese visitors should also be encouraged by the vivid images and exhibitions from each nation to participate with people from other parts of the world. The theme of the World Expo, "Better City, Better Life", promotes kindness, tolerance and consideration amongst everyone. It essentially hopes to raise people's spirits and their courage to live benevolently.

Besides presenting cultures of the world and its models of productivity, the World Expo will show how people have persevered during different historical periods.

From the first World Expo in 1851 in London to the 1933 event in Chicago, the expos were mainly a show of man's self-intoxication to conquer and exploit nature. But from 1935 to 1970, the expos were man's self-reflections in a post-war period on the relations between people and between different countries.

On June 16, 1972, the United Nations passed the Declaration on the Human Environment, or the Stockholm Declaration, calling on all countries to maintain and improve the environment and how people live for the benefit of future generations. With "Celebrating Tomorrow's Fresh New Environment" as its slogan, the 1974 Spokane Expo was the first expo with a theme related to environmental issues, shifting worldwide attention to "man and the environment". It symbolized the growing concerns over how to pursue harmony between man and nature and how to achieve sustainable development.

The 2000 expo in Hanover, Germany, with its theme of "Humankind, Nature and Technology", helped popularize the concept of sustainable development throughout the world. It sounded an alarm for the crisis between humans and nature that has worsened over the past 40 years.

Undoubtedly, the World Expo is a show of progress and of man's changing development concepts in different historical stages. The reason why China has attached such weight to the World Expo in Shanghai is that the rapidly growing developing nation is now trying to explore how it can develop sustainably after three decades of economic boom. This ceaseless pursuit of environmentally conscious development is exactly in line with the themes of the expo over the past four decades.

The author is a researcher with the China Foundation for International and Strategic Studies.

CHINA FORUM

(China Daily 05/03/2010 page4)