Kibaki seeks to borrow leaf from world’s biggest expo

SHANGHAI, THURSDAY

The annual Nairobi ASK Trade Fair could be just one exhibition stand inside the biggest trade exposition ever being staged in China from tomorrow.

President Kibaki, who often opens the Nairobi show, could marvel at the sheer expanse and gigantic displays in the World Expo in Shanghai when he joins several other world leaders invited to the mammoth display.

Kibaki, accompanied by Trade Minister Amos Kimunya, will have to be driven around like other leaders as they tour the length and breadth of the expo, which is the size of a small town.

Chinese President Hu Jintao will also be joined by French President Nicholas Sarkozy, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso at the opening ceremony.

There is a lot to make President Kibaki’s entourage appreciate the commercial and industrial might of China, whose presence is being felt in many Kenyan sectors.

Near the centre of the World Expo grounds, the crimson-painted, crown-shaped China Pavilion towers over other nations’ exhibits as a physical display of the country’s pride and growing power.

People visit the World Expo site on the trial day, last Sunday, in Shanghai, China. It is said to be the biggest trade fair in the world ever. [PHOTO: AP]

Just as the Beijing Olympics showed China’s growing economic and geopolitical influence for a few weeks in 2008, the biggest world’s fair ever will let China’s communist leaders showcase design, tourism and cultural diplomacy over six months.

The expo, opening tomorrow, is expected to attract 70 million visitors, including an estimated five million foreign tourists.

China is far from the first power or would-be power to use an Expo to announce its global arrival.

The Great Exhibition of 1851 in London marked the coming of the Industrial Revolution. The 1970 Expo in Osaka, following the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, showed Japan’s rise as an industrial power.

During the heyday of the first World’s Fairs, China was either poor or preyed upon by foreign colonial powers.

The China Pavilion, standing 207 feet (63 metres) tall, resembles an ancient crown and is painted the same red as Beijing’s imperial palace. It overlooks the eastern half of the Expo grounds, straddling the tea-colored Huangpu River.

Eye catching

Many of the other pavilions are more eye-catching in design and better illustrate the Expo’s theme of "Better City, Better Life."

The Netherlands’ pavilion displays futuristic, green housing on its whimsical "Happy Street" structure. Canada’s features a Canadian wood exterior and interactive programming on urban sustainability designed by the Cirque du Soleil.

The USA Pavilion offers a tale of a young girl who inspires her community to help revitalise a tainted bit of her hometown.

But only the China Pavilion dominates. The brilliant blue strobes shooting into the flood-lit night sky can be seen from kilometres away.

"China is not only showcasing its 5,000 years of civilisation, but also showing what is going on in today’s China," said Ni Jianping of the Shanghai Institute of American Studies. "It wants to show how Chinese people’s lives have improved."

The Expo sits atop former steel works and shipyards and spurred a lavish upgrade of Shanghai’s crumbling infrastructure. New subways, roads, bridges, tunnels were built to accommodate the crowds. Derelict neighbourhoods were replaced by parks, office towers and chic shopping centers. Landscape lighting, fresh paint and extravagant floral displays added the finishing.

"China is doing better and better. There is no limit to what China can do," says Shen Dingli, Director of the Centre for American Studies at Shanghai’s Fudan University.

The official cost of $4.2 billion covers just the Expo site and its operations.

The first trial run this past week brought complaints of crowds, confusion and a lack of food, though by the week’s end operations improved and many took the glitches in stride.

Looking nice

"We just wandered around. It’s nice to look at from the outside, so we just took photos and walked," said one young mother as she headed home with her young son.

As a head-turning event, the Expo complements China’s campaign to be influential through sports programmes, humanitarian aid and cultural and language centres around the world.

The Shanghai event has ducked many controversies that preceded the 2008 Beijing Olympics, such as the triumphant round-the-world Olympic torch relay that was thwarted by persistent protests over Beijing’s crackdown on a Tibetan uprising. Expo organisers had considered something similar — a round-the-world "friendship boat" — but dropped the idea.

For some Chinese, pride is mixed with doubts over the huge costs involved in such events.

"There are so many places for the Chinese Government to spend money and they have made the Olympics and the Expo a top priority," said Ding. "Eventually this overspending could backfire, especially given the inconvenience caused for the local people."

Authorities plan to give each Shanghai family a free Expo ticket and a 200 yuan ($29) prepaid transportation card as partial compensation for inconveniences such as traffic jams.

For Kibaki’s entourage, they could borrow a Chinese leaf and use it to spur Vision 2030.

From Associated Press