“Ni hao, I’m Kobe Bryant.” This video greeting delivered in a combination of Mandarin and English from the face of the NBA, which many China specialists call America’s most successful export to China, were the first words I heard inside the U.S.A. pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, which opened in China’s largest city on May 1.
The U.S.A. pavilion, basketball stars and all, however, almost did not happen. Indeed, until last year the U.S. appeared as if it was going to be the only country without representation at the Expo, while even international pariahs like North Korea and Myanmar had their own displays. In the lead-up to the event, the U.S. government cited a 1994 law that the State Department interpreted as blocking direct government funding of diplomacy projects as the main stumbling point in developing a pavilion. It is because of this policy that most recent U.S. pavilions have been privatized, like the Toyota-funded U.S. Pavilion at the 2005 Expo in Aichi, Japan. “Ni hao, I’m Kobe Bryant.” This video greeting delivered in a combination of Mandarin and English from the face of the NBA, which many China specialists call America’s most successful export to China, were the first words I heard inside the U.S.A. pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, which opened in China’s largest city on May 1.
The U.S.A. pavilion, basketball stars and all, however, almost did not happen. Indeed, until last year the U.S. appeared as if it was going to be the only country without representation at the Expo, while even international pariahs like North Korea and Myanmar had their own displays. In the lead-up to the event, the U.S. government cited a 1994 law that the State Department interpreted as blocking direct government funding of diplomacy projects as the main stumbling point in developing a pavilion. It is because of this policy that most recent U.S. pavilions have been privatized, like the Toyota-funded U.S. Pavilion at the 2005 Expo in Aichi, Japan.
Legal constraints aside, it is hard to understand American inertia in supporting a pavilion. Perhaps part of the reason has to do with a waning American enthusiasm for public diplomacy and the ability of the U.S. to rest on its soft power laurels. But it might also be rooted in the ambiguity of the role of Expos and World Fairs in the modern world. Large affairs like the Expo made sense when easy international transportation and near instant communication did not exist. Since most people would have convene at an event in a major city to see the latest technologies or products from overseas, projects like the Expo seemed only natural. Sometime between the debut of the Eiffel Tower for Paris’s 1889 Exposition Universelle and the U.S. taking a pass on the 2000 Hannover Expo, the most recent even of its kind before the Shanghai Expo, the significance of large-scale public exhibitions declined. What is different now though is the importance U.S.-China bilateral relationship and the weight that China is throwing behind Shanghai to make Expos relevant again (China is spending an estimated 44 billion USD on the Expo and related projects.) It was simply too politically costly for the U.S. to be a no-show in Shanghai. Upon assuming the office of Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton in her unofficial, official capacity was able to jumpstart moribund U.S. plans for the 2010 expo and fundraise from corporate sponsors to build a pavilion with private backing. A nontransparent bidding process for design and building rights further complicated the difficult situation. The U.S. put together a pavilion in just over a year with little government support, while other countries had been pouring resources into their pavilions since the announcement of the Shanghai Expo in 2002. This strained effort showed. Although the Chinese visitors who waited in front of the Pavilion for hours may not have noticed, for Americans at the pavilion the corporate sponsors’ influence verged on blatant product placement. Scenes of everyday American life included buying a meal at KFC or checking into a Marriott. Compared to the adventurous designs offered by other countries, the U.S. pavilion’s architecture was boring. The American friends I visited with compared the exterior to a Wal-mart or a suburban shopping mall. For the host nation China there is no lack of enthusiasm or purpose. It plans to reinvent the Expo as a platform for growth and expanding its international influence. This places the Expo under the category of so called mega-events like the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Construction for the Expo, much of it improvements to Shanghai’s infrastructure, exceeds Olympic preparations in magnitude and budget. To accommodate the estimated 70 million visitors, Shanghai undertook laying miles of new subway track, the construction of a new airport terminal and a yearlong refurbishment of Shanghai’s famous waterfront Bund. The degree of personal mobilization is surprising too. In a move to boost China’s image, the municipal government has even been able to stamp out the pervasive Shanghainese habit of wearing pajamas in public. Nanjing, the city where I live in the same region as Shanghai, is bracing itself for an anticipated tourism rush by hiring people to smile in its train station.
As was the case with the Olympics when I was living in Beijing in 2008, reminders of the Expo are inescapable. Haibao, the Expo’s squiggly, blue mascot, is ubiquitous in Shanghai. The Expo’s two official theme songs are fixtures on television and radio. Despite forced relocations and inconveniences for many Shanghainese, for most of the Chinese people I talked to in Nanjing and Shanghai, the Expo is a point of national pride and a frequent topic of conversation. If the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the seat of China’s government, celebrated the international acceptance of China as a member of the community of nations, and a rather impressive one at that, then the intention behind the Shanghai Expo is more limited in geographic and symbolic scope- namely to mark Shanghai’s arrival a world-class city on the level of established international centers like New York. It is no coincidence that last year China’s State Council pronounced that Shanghai would become an international financial and shipping by 2020. It is surprising then that all of the exhibits at this self-proclaimed international event were clearly aimed at a Chinese audience. The Kobe Bryant video presentation continued to show everyday Americans stumbling to pronounce basic Chinese phrases, a source of much amusement to most Chinese. Another movie in the American Pavilion featured messages from Barrack Obama and Hilary Clinton addressed directly to the Chinese people. More tellingly, many pavilions did not even use their home country’s language, instead opting for Chinese and English. After years of China’s international image building, that the world is coming to China must be making the Chinese architects of the Expo happy. On the other hand though, the very few foreign visitors I saw at the Expo seem to suggest that the direct international influence of the event will be limited. From Paul Wozniak '09 in Nanjing
