The Urban Planet Pavilion at the Expo. The event's theme is environmentally sustainable cities, which seems dubious since the Expo features the largest LED video screen ever created. (Image by Triad Berlin.)

Costing billions of dollars, the Shanghai World Expo 2010 aims to reintroduce China’s most populous city to the international stage. The Expo kicked off last week and its exorbitance makes the Olympics seem like a high school track meet. While the cost of the Expo itself is $4.2 billion, the nation has poured more than $50 billion into infrastructure improvements for the city. An excerpt from the Associated Press story about the opening of the Expo:

“Friday night’s star-studded indoor festivities included action star Jackie Chan, Japanese singer Shinji Tanimura, concert pianist Lang Lang and opera star Andrea Bocelli, among 2,300 performers. Afterward, guests moved outside for a lights, music and fireworks jubilee that lit up the drab banks of the Huangpu river with 1,200 searchlights, powerful lasers and mobile fountains.

Jackie Chan: Please join us at Shanghai World Expo 2010--and remember to rent "The Spy Next Door" on DVD!

The normally tea-colored waters glowed with 6,000 red and orange 1.6-foot (0.5-meter) LED balls and lights from a parade of flag boats representing nations participating in the Expo.

The Expo is expected to draw 70 million people over six months to pavilions from almost 200 nations designed to reflect the urban sustainability theme of ‘Better City, Better Life.’

China is splashing out 28.6 billion yuan ($4.2 billion) on the Expo itself, and many billions more on other improvements for this city of 20 million people. Freshly painted buildings, new highways, subway lines and airport terminals–all proclaim the country’s newfound status as a modern, increasingly affluent industrial giant.

‘The government will spend whatever money it takes. For the leadership, it’s worthwhile,’ said Zheng Yongnian, director of the East Asian Institute of the National University of Singapore.”

More World’s Fair posts:

• Great Exhibition of London in 1851.
• Home movies of NYC’s 1939 World’s Fair.
• Official Guide of NYC’s 1939 World’s Fair.
• Official Guide of NYC’s 1964 World’s Fair.