Monster of an Expo does no one good

I'm just back from a trip to Italy, and several friends asked me what I thought about the Shanghai Expo. They all seemed suspicious while talking about this topic, and I was surprised to see none of them truly in favor of the Expo. Some even called it a "monster". I had thought I was alone to think negatively of the event, and didn't want to be the one to open the topic. Among my friends in China too, comprising Westerners and Chinese, I didn't find anyone who would visit the Expo. I will not, either.

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In 1967, Montreal where I was born held the World Expo, and it brought deep positive changes in society. I was still young and had not started traveling around the world yet. The Expo is where I saw Russians and Chinese for the first time, as did most of the visitors. It was mostly cultural instead of business oriented, and we learned a lot about other countries. It was after the Montreal Expo that Canadians started drinking wine instead of beer with meals.

The subway was completed on time for the Expo. And the best pavilions remained until today with a new mission. For instance, the United States' big steel and glass ball was called Biosphere and hosted birds of all kinds. The French pavilion became a casino. One of the three islands where the pavilions were built - the manmade one called La Ronde - was turned into an amusement park.

I have not really enquired but it seems to me that the common Chinese don't see the Shanghai Expo as a necessity. Too much money has been spent on it, and the entrance fee is not for ordinary people.

Who will benefit then? I suspect the Expo to be mostly a commercial event. All the while the pavilions were being built, it appeared to my un-experienced eye as an architects' competition.

Why does China always need to do things so big? What can ordinary people think of the country that in less than two years hosted not only the greatest Olympics in the world, the biggest National Day (60th anniversary) celebration and now the most expensive World Expo of all times, but also was rocked by a devastating Sichuan earthquake that left about 80,000 people dead, the recent earthquake in Qinghai and suffered a terrible drought in South China.

Education has to be reformed. Medical care has to be reformed. Old age security has to be insured for farmers. Can China really afford the expenses of such a gigantic exhibition? I'm not so sure that the Chinese people will feel proud of their motherland after the Expo. Too much is too much.

I sincerely think that the Expo will not profit the Chinese people. Nowadays, people travel and see the world with their own eyes instead of reading information documents handed out for free at expos. And those who don't travel have access to TV and the Internet, if they want to discover other countries, their cultures, food and activities.

Moreover, the expensive Expo would have a negative impact on China's image, as I discovered recently, for not a small number of Westerners see it as a huge waste. Did the Expo cost $4 billion or $58 billion? Such numbers make me think someone is playing a game of hide-and-seek. Westerners question the role China is playing in the world campaign for low-carbon emission and saving energy.

And what will happen if China has overestimated the number of visitors? Montreal made that mistake in 1976 with the Olympics. For Jean Drapeau, the then Montreal mayor, who always thought very big in his megalomaniac quest, a deficit was impossible.

But he made a very big mistake and the citizens had to pay $300 a year for 30 years to refund the debt. Who will ever forget and forgive that?

No one ignores China today. All eyes are on it. Does it need to attract more attention? And what will be next? When the economic crisis began, China blamed the United States for maintaining a living standard that was beyond its capacity. It looks like the illness is contagious.

The author is a Canadian writer living in Beijing.