Cultural Diplomacy, Cosmopolitanism and Global Hierarchy at the Shanghai Expo

Space and Culture2015, Vol. 18(1) 39 –54© The Author(s) 2014

Reprints and permissions:sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/1206331214534057sac.sagepub.com

Article

Cultural Diplomacy, Cosmopolitanism and Global Hierarchy at the Shanghai Expo

Tim Winter1

AbstractIn 2010, the city of Shanghai hosted the largest and most spectacular World’s Fair ever. Shanghai Expo attracted a staggering 73 million visitors, around 98% of whom were domestic Chinese, and involved the participation of 190 countries. As a forum of “virtual tourism,” the event is significant given the rapid and long-term growth in outbound Chinese tourism. This article pursues a closer reading of how “the world” was performed and exhibited to these visitors. Oriented by two theoretical considerations—the spatial configuration of the expo site and its cosmopolitan imagination—the article considers how the format of the Expo revealed and declared certain elements of the global, while simultaneously effacing and squeezing out others. The Expo is thus interpreted as an important mechanism in the creation of a new national citizenry in China and as part of the ceremonialization of a global polity of a “family of nations.”

KeywordsShanghai Expo, World’s Fairs, China, cultural diplomacy, cosmopolitanism

Introduction

By every measure, the 2010 Shanghai Expo was the biggest, most elaborate, and most expensive World’s Fair in history. Yet this US$45 billion event received very little press attention in the West. It is often thought, after all, that Universal Expositions and World’s Fairs were the exhibi-tionary complexes of empire and nation building of the late 19th, early 20th centuries. Indeed, within academia, interest in fairs and expos has primarily focused on the pre-World War II events held in Europe and the United States. This article indicates why Shanghai 2010 demands we look more closely at this genre of mega-event once again. It does so by focusing on some the ways in which it was politically and culturally significant to one of the world’s most rapidly modernizing, urbanizing countries. The analysis is oriented by two theoretical considerations, the spatial con-figuration of the expo site and its cosmopolitan imagination.1

The significance of this analysis reaches far beyond Shanghai itself. A key aim here is to illustrate why the event warrants greater critical attention in the West than it was given at the time. Second, it seeks to add new analytical pathways for World’s Fairs through a close reading of how a condensed version of the world was represented spatially to an audience of 73 million

1Alfred Deakin Research Institute, Centre for Cultural Heritage for the Asia Pacific, Deakin University, Australia

Corresponding Author:Tim Winter, Alfred Deakin Research Institute, Centre for Cultural Heritage for the Asia Pacific, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, Victoria, 3125, Australia. Email: [email protected]

534057 SACXXX10.1177/1206331214534057Space and CultureWinterresearch-article2014

by guest on January 14, 2015sac.sagepub.comDownloaded from

http://sac.sagepub.com/

40 Space and Culture 18(1)

visitors. It is well recognized that since their birth in the mid-19th century, World’s Fairs and Universal Expositions have acted as unique markers of history, both reflecting and proclaiming the aims and ambitions, fears and anxieties of their time to huge public audiences. They have told multiple stories: about anticipated futures and reconstructed pasts, about how nations have seen themselves and others on the global stage, and about the rise and fall of empires and the ongoing shifts in the global ordering of power. Shanghai Expo continued this exhibitionary tradition, and in this regard offered nothing particularly new. But when viewed in the context of the events and state policies of late-20th century China, the decision to host a gathering so explicitly cosmopoli-tan in nature was of real historical significance. Held just 2 years after the Beijing Olympics, Shanghai Expo involved the relocation of 18,000 families and 270 factories, and brought together 190 countries, more than 50 nongovernmental organizations, and a variety of multinational cor-porations and institutions involved in urban governance. Of the 73 million visitors who attended between May and October, around 97% to 99% were domestic Chinese.2 The theme for Shanghai Better City, Better Life, exposed these visitors to the myriad issues associated with urban sustain-ability and the challenges facing cities around the world. In this regard it sought to advance a “global ethics” (Turner, 2006) for a population currently experiencing a level of urban growth unparalleled in history (Huang, 2007).

While much scholarly attention has been given to the showcasing of technologies, the cultural displays of empire, or the architectural representations of nations in fairs, less attention has been dedicated to the ways in which these events have captured and imagined the world spatially, and how they have presented the world in miniature, as a “family of nations.” Shanghai represented an intriguing example of this. A spatial analysis of Expo tells us much about how China sees the world and its place in it today, and how the state wants to present that world to its citizens. Accordingly, the article examines how a “world picture,” including 190 participating countries, was spatially articulated to visitors, the vast majority of whom have yet to cross an international border. In this regard, expo is seen as an important event of civic education.

Finally, by considering Shanghai 2010 in terms of its cosmopolitan imagination, the article responds to Delanty’s call for accounts of emerging cosmopolitanisms outside the West. Expo is examined as a cultural expression of cosmopolitanism, but one that is intended to perform a social task in the ongoing reconfiguration of a Chinese citizenry. It does not rehearse recent debates within the cosmopolitanism literature, but rather focuses on the political and cultural significance of this mega-event. As Delanty (2009) and others have suggested, in China over the past three decades “there are signs of cosmopolitanism emerging as a new model of modernity emerges” (p. 256). Shanghai Expo should be seen as an important manifestation of such shifts, and the question thus arises of how to interpret such an event. A spatial analysis reveals the cen-trality of the national and the nation. But it will also be argued that the expo genre delivers a form of cultural display and cultural encounter that privileges and advances an aesthetic cosmopolitan-ism, one that elides the critical and political aspects of the cosmopolitan project (Harvey, 2009).

The article begins by situating the approach adopted here within similar readings of previous World’s Fairs. Turning to Shanghai, it will be argued that the presentation of a world of nations revealed much about the host country’s geopolitical relations and its perceptions of a global hier-archy. The expo will also be read as a prism through which only certain features of the world were rendered sharp, with much of the world’s mess and complexity fading away into the back-ground. These themes are carried through to the second half of the article, which moves inside to consider how country pavilions hosted their guests.

Laying Out History in the World of Fairs

World’s Fairs have long been important forums for learning about other countries, other cultures. From their earliest days they proclaimed to be celebrations of the cultures of “all nations,” and,



Winter 41

as such, can be regarded as prototypical expressions and arenas of cosmopolitanism. In many cases, part of the motivation for hosting a World’s Fair has been a desire of the state to cultivate a certain type of citizenry, one that is oriented toward both the national and international. Crucially, and as scholars of 19th- and early 20th–century expos have highlighted, such events have provided unique opportunities for fostering a heightened sense of collective identity through a careful staging, and placing, of the nation in the world (Greenhalgh 2000, 2011; Hoffenberg, 2001). More specifically, hosts have typically presented a hierarchically ordered picture of the world, a semiotic topography in which they locate themselves at the summit. National supremacy has been asserted in fields like technology, science, the arts, and culture. One of the defining characteristics of imperialist fairs in Europe and the United States was the attribution of the self as enlightened modern through the presentation of others as primitive, exotic, or less than civilized.

The 1870s marked an important turning point in World’s Fairs toward the use of architecture as a metonym for nations and cultures, most notably in the form of the Rue de Nations (Roeber, 2008). Thereafter, we also begin to see a spatial vocabulary emerging, one which conveyed an ordering of nations and cultures. In Amsterdam 1883, for example, the main building housed the displays of the host country, as well as those produced by England, France, Belgium, and Germany. Non-European displays were scattered among the grounds of the site as part of “an amusement park” (Mattie, 1998, p. 63). Four years later, the Exposition Universelle in Paris was strongly reminiscent of a Christian cathedral in its layout. In her 1977 reading of the site’s sym-bolism, Deborah Silverman argued that the Eiffel Tower stood in for the spire, with the Champ de Mars acting as the long nave and the Trocadéro, Galerie des Machines and other buildings all aligned in accordance with the conventions of transepts and side aisles (Silverman, 1977). Colonial exhibitions were mounted in a wholly different area away from the main site, along the Esplanade des Invalides.3 For the Exposition Universelle of 1900 these two exhibition spaces were expanded upon with additional buildings and landscaped boulevards. A third exhibition space was added on the banks of the River Seine (Figure 1). Here European rivals were gathered into the Rue de Nations, a display that was once again some distance from the main activities. To convey France’s close, and largely paternal, relations with its colonial territories, pavilions and show villages for North Africa and Indochina were among those nestled into a compact area that sloped down toward the river, bounded on one side by the grand Trocadéro, and by the Eiffel Tower on the other.4 Architecturally ambitious and flamboyant, these Parisian expositions were showcases of French cultural and imperial grandeur. Not surprisingly, in a period of history defined by rivalries between Europe’s imperial powers, France was far from alone in pursuing this vocabulary of display.

Figure 1. Exposition Universelle, Paris 1900.Source. Reproduction kindly granted by The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (92.R.20).




Across the channel in London, the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886 offered a visual rendering of Britain’s territories and dominions in a gridlike structure, opposite the Royal Albert Hall. Interestingly, although India was given a prominent billing in the fair’s title, displays from Canada and Australia took central stage, with the exhibits from the subcontinent distributed between outer halls (Hoffenberg, 2001). On the edge of the site sat a display of the Cape of Good Hope in a small building dedicated to Africa. Visitors entered via New Zealand or via a display on electric lighting. Paul Greenhalgh (2000, p. 62) suggests that the layout of British fairs reflected a perceived hierarchy of “economic usefulness” within the empire. This strategy was particularly evident in the fairs of the 1890s onward, with smaller colonies and dominions being grouped together into composite displays, as Greenhalgh explains,

The “lesser” territories were to be seen as a single concern, a grouped resource fused together as an economic unit with Britain as the common factor to link them. Despite their very different geographic locations and traditions, they were fused into the proverbial “over there,” with Britain at the center of their world focus. (2000, p. 63)

Across the Atlantic, the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 was one of a number of U.S. fairs that presented a very different reading of the world to that which had been offered by Europe (Rydell, 1987). Surrounding the show’s centrepiece, the “Court of the Universe,” was a series of palaces dedicated to various aspects of American life, including agriculture, mining, education, the liberal arts, and transportation (Figure 2). The “Avenue of the States,” featuring California, Ohio, New York, and Oregon among others, also occupied a privileged waterfront position. Back from this, the “Avenue of the Nations” was laid out with much less coherence, with France, Canada, China, and Italy among those vying for space and visibility (Macomber, 1915, pp. 30-31).

Such geographical expressions of power and imperialism were not limited to Europe or the United States, however, as Hong Kal reveals in his account of Japanese exhibitions in Korea in the early decades of the 20th century. Kal argues a transition in Japan’s political culture in its

Figure 2. “Court of the Universe,” San Francisco 1915.Source. Reproduction kindly granted by The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (94-B9910).



Winter 43

occupation of Korea is evident in the different approach taken to the design and planning of expos held in Seoul in 1915 and 1929. In the former, an “old” and “stagnant” Korea was con-trasted with the possibilities of a “new” and “modern” country under Japanese rule (Kal, 2005, p. 508). Fourteen years later, the imagery was one of cooperation, whereby Japan portrayed the two countries as partners in modernity; suppression had lost favor to a narrative of collaboration and mutual interests. Kal offers a detailed account of how Japanese organizers designed the 1929 expo to be harmonious and sympathetic to the architectural and spatial principles of the existing palace complex. A “processional space” enabled hand crafted archways and buildings inspired by classical Korean designs to be admired by visitors. Walkways aligned with the east-west and north-south axes of the site also enabled modern-looking Japanese buildings at one end to be visually connected with existing traditional palace structures at the other. Kal elaborates upon the wider symbolic significance of this layout, stating,

This visual coordination was made not only for purely functional or aesthetic reasons, but rather was predicated upon an ideology of “co-prosperity” between Japan and Korea, the development of which was supposedly based on their shared spirit of “Eastern” cultures. (2005, p. 518)

Kal accounts for this ideological shift between the two expos by considering wider political and economic changes that were taking place at that time. Of these, Japan’s geopolitical realign-ment during that period is of particular relevance here. Up until 1922, the country’s leaders were feeling increasingly confident to define and measure themselves against the imperial, military powers of Europe. But the Washington Naval Treaty of that year, coupled with the ending of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance shortly after weakened Japan’s ties with the West. No longer able to rely on Western cultural influences as her guide for modernization, Japan turned toward its regional neighbors for reassurance in uncertain times. As the events of the 1930s revealed, the country’s self-appointed position as the region’s benevolent guardian would in fact be deeply related to its desire to occupy and control significant parts of the Asian Pacific Rim.

While there are few studies that match the level of detail offered by Kal, it is clear that the layout and planning of World’s Fairs over the course of the 20th century have often been influ-enced by the geopolitical dynamics of the moment. The most notorious and perhaps most cited example of this was the confrontation between Russia and Germany in Paris in 1937. After World War II, the hostilities and alignments of the Cold War era would also be manifest in the arrangement and design of pavilions for the Brussels 1958 fair. This time the Soviet Union and United States would face off against each other. Intriguingly, the large Vatican pavilion, perhaps seen as a voice of reason, was positioned close by.5 Little changed 14 years later in Osaka. Once again the two superpowers constructed the fair’s largest and most dramatic pavilions. On this occasion, however, they were located on opposite sides of the site, with a number of nations stationed in between to offer a symbolic buffer.6 Forty years later, Shanghai would present a very different picture of global politics and international relations. As we shall see, reading the micro-geographies of the site reveals much about the world as it was in 2010, and in particular how the hosts, China, saw themselves in the emergent new world order of the 21st century.

Laying Out Shanghai

In the planning of World’s Fairs, host countries have invariably ensured their own pavilions are given the most prominent locations. Continuing this tradition, the China National Pavilion formed the center-piece of the site; around which various thoroughfares, a large entrance gate and the “Expo Boulevard” were situated (Figure 3). With its various restaurants, shops and toilet facilities, this Boulevard acted as a key point of orientation as visitors moved between zones. Aligned north–south toward the river, the Boulevard marked the symbolic midpoint for elevated




walkways which ran the entire east–west length of the Pudong side of the Expo, a space that was largely given over to national pavilions. The significance of these walkways and the upper levels of the Expo Boulevard was more than just physical. In addition to acting as the principal axes for pedestrians and electric vehicles, they also offered visitors one of the few vantage points from where they could visually absorb their surroundings. Crucially, their elevation, combined with height instructions given to pavilion designers, ensured that visitors gazed down upon or across to all the participating countries, apart from one: China. It was widely reported in the lead up to the event that the host country’s pavilion should be at least triple the height of the other national pavilions; a structure “manifesting China’s ultimate power in Eastern Asia.”7 Surmounting a stepped pedestal, the 63-meter high “Oriental Crown” unequivocally commanded respect and admiration, with onlookers forced to cast their eyes skyward, even from these elevated walk-ways. Moreover, with a pavilion three times the height of all others, China stood as an ever vis-ible landmark around which visitors traveled to other countries.

The location of this pavilion, which included the 31 exhibitions dedicated to the country’s provinces, placed China firmly at the center of both Asia and the world. Looking further afield, the zoning of the Expo presented visitors with a cartography of the planet that privileged Asia as its core. Situated either side of the Chinese pavilions, Zones A and B, with their 28 and 30 pavil-ions, respectively, showcased the region. The latter also featured the countries of Oceania and a number of international organizations and pavilions dedicated to the theme of urbanization. The rest of the world—Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and the Americas—was squeezed into Zone C (61 pavilions), some distance from the Expo Boulevard. In broad terms, these four regions were allocated near equal space within that zone. Pictorial maps handed out to visitors on entry graphi-cally illustrated the contrast between a comfortably spacious, neatly landscaped Asia and a tightly clustered rest of the world. Within this regional cartography a variety of factors deter-mined the final positioning of pavilions. For those countries that built their own, plot size and position were subject to closed door negotiations with the organizers. Visitor management con-cerns also meant distributing the key attractions as evenly as possible across the site. But in addi-tion to addressing such logistical issues, the organizers also pursued a deliberative symbolism in

Figure 3. China National Pavilion, 2010.Source. Photo by author.



Winter 45

the layout. For example, geographic and political proximity were clearly expressed in the posi-tioning of Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. Stationed adjacent to the China National Pavilion, all three were sheltered by the extended canopy of the Oriental Crown. Not far away sat some of China’s closest regional allies, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka (Figure 4). Beyond that stood the other “rising giant” of Asia, India. Visitors were given little sense of any economic or cultural parity however, with the monumental grandeur of the Chinese pavilion dwarfing India’s walled enclosure. If China positioned itself at the center, then its choice of who to put on the global margins was indeed revealing. On the outer edge of the Asia zone stood Japan, with the United States positioned right at the other end, on the outer limits of Zone C. While this in part adhered to the principles of shopping mall design, whereby popular department stores are located at either end to maximize traffic flow, it also symbolically captured the uneasy bilateral relations of the time and how China “placed” its primary economic rivals.

In a microgeography of country as architecture, nation-states sat side by side, in neatly planned rows or faced inward creating spaces reminiscent of the public squares of historic European cit-ies. In more general terms, the concept of country as pavilion also meant visitors left with a good understanding of the varying wealth of nations. Pavilions were divided into three categories. The richest nations invested in architecture, using bespoke designs to carry their message. Indeed, eye-catching façades, dramatically shaped structures, or stately elegance constituted a vocabu-lary intended to entice and impress. Those countries with less resources decorated prefabricated boxlike structures in an effort to distinguish themselves from their counterparts. And visitors were left in no doubt as to which participants were in the lower echelons of the global hierarchy of nations. Gathered together in a series of joint pavilions, the 108 “low-income countries” deco-rated their modest interior spaces in an effort to secure attention and recognition. Media coverage over the course of the event, both domestic and international, reinforced this indexing of nations, as story after story gravitated to the most iconic, spectacular and popular. With coverage often focusing on the length of queues, the likes of Afghanistan, Senegal, Togo, and Uruguay were rarely considered newsworthy. The consistent imbalance in the length of queues across the site also provided a clear indication of how the nation-state remains a powerful brand in the Chinese

Figure 4. Nepal and elevated walkways, 2010.Source. Photo by author.




public imagination. On days when Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, the United States, or Germany were boasting 6- to 8-hour wait times, many of the corporate and nongovernmental exhibitions were queue free. By the time the event closed, supranational bodies like the European Union and United Nations had received significantly fewer visitors than the less than newswor-thy developing countries of Turkey, Qatar, or Argentina.8 Beyond the national pavilions, only immersive multimedia exhibitions on oil or futuristic urban transport schemes gained “must see” reputations.

To better understand why national pavilions dominated the visitor league tables, it is worth considering the Expo as a site of virtual tourism. Indeed, in all its symbols and metaphors, tour-ism pervaded the Expo experience. Local newspapers and television channels recommended “must see” countries on a near daily basis, and for many a day at the Expo needed to be com-memorated with the purchase of a “souvenir.” Most notable though, the “Expo Passport”—stamped on departure of pavilions—rapidly became the event’s unrivalled iconic collectable (Figure 5). Caught out by the popularity of the passport, a number of pavilions were forced to introduce queuing facilities for stamping at their exits. With an empty passport costing around 30 Yuan (US$4), many visitors carried several, obtaining stamps for family members or in the hope of making a sizable profit through resale. It was widely reported that passports with a complete collection of pavilion stamps were being traded in online auctions for thousands of Yuan.9

In “seeing the world” geographic anomalies permeated the Expo experience. In Zone A (Asia), Morocco, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar sat in close proximity to India and Nepal. Not far away, Israel and Saudi Arabia faced each other on the Asia Square, one of the five “continent squares” on the Pudong side of the river. With Southeast Asia distributed across Zones A and B, Cambodia found more friendly neighbors in the form of New Zealand; its long-time rival Thailand positioned some distance away next to Australia, on the far side of the Oceania Square. Nonetheless, there was no sign of the recent tensions between the two countries. In the months leading up to the event, Cambodia and Thailand had broken off diplomatic relations over the disputed World Heritage Site of Preah Vihear. As part of a long-running military engagement,

Figure 5. Expo passports, 2010.Source. Photo by author.



Winter 47

the two countries exchanged fire just 2 weeks prior to the Expo opening. Over in Zone C, visitors were presented with a relatively accurate representation of countries by continent. In the line of the Americas, however, Canada was confusingly bordered by Peru, Brazil, and Columbia on one side, and the Caribbean community on the other. In terms of the actual pavilions themselves, the presentation of the nation as an architecture of hospitality raises some interesting questions. Positioned carefully and arranged by continent, these pavilions reinforced the idea in the popular imagination of the nation-state as a discrete, neatly bounded entity. Pedestrian barriers, walk-ways, and landscaping features all created a sense of well-defined separation, and a comfortable coexistence. In a world where exclusions and alliances were excised, no attention was given to Fiji’s ongoing suspension from the Commonwealth of Nations, nor the post 9/11 proclamations of an “axis of Evil” or “outposts of tyranny.” There was also no mention of United Nations’ sanc-tions. Intriguingly, at a time when the U.N. pavilion sat just a few hundred meters away from those of Iran, Sudan, and Côte d’Ivoire, its Security Council passed new resolutions strengthen-ing sanctions against all three countries. In the microcosm of the Expo then, there were no border tensions or disputed territories, and no sign of subnational or international conflicts. In a geogra-phy of apolitical harmony all the global tensions of the moment faded away.

Inside, pavilions also dissolved and subsumed all their ethnic, religious, and regional com-plexities into a series of national metanarratives. Much like the fairs of the 19th century, culture was once again offered up as aesthetic spectacle, extricated from, and relieved of, all its historical and territorial responsibility. In order to consider what might be the ideological premise for such historical and territorial extraction the themes of heritage and tourism remain prescient. China and India both made a point of celebrating the cultural heritage of highly contested and contro-versial border regions. In the case of the former, visitors were presented with “the rich and color-ful” traditions of Tibet. Events like “Tibetan Week,” themed “Heaven in Tibet,” and displays in the Chinese Provincial Pavilion constituted a celebratory performative, whereby cultural diver-sity formed the basis for national harmony.10 A discourse of “intangible heritage,” as manifest in parades and stage shows, served to entirely obfuscate histories of violence and occupation, and the region’s long struggle for autonomy or independence from Beijing.11 Perhaps most startling of all was the disconnection between the focus on cultural heritage in the Xinjiang exhibition and the extensive destruction of one of its most historically important cities Kashgar, that was occur-ring in 2010. Launched the previous year, Beijing’s “Kashgar Dangerous House Reform” pro-gram is expected to raise 85% of the Old City, including centuries old houses, mosques, and markets. As Hammer notes, there are good reasons to believe that the plan was politically moti-vated, and part of a wider strategy for repressing the country’s ethnic minorities.12

While China carefully dissolved away any cultural and political boundaries that might sepa-rate these remote regions from their surrounding provinces, it also ensured its outer boundaries remained beyond contention. More than 2 months into the expo, a number of newspapers reported an incident involving the removal of brochures from the India pavilion by officers of China’s Public Security Bureau. Stories indicated that the brochures were removed because they showed Arunachal Pradesh as part of Indian territory. China does not recognize this border, instead claiming much of the area forms part of South Tibet.13 Interestingly, in the same pavilion, Indian organizers chose the regions of Rajasthan and Kashmir to showcase a rich national heritage of handicrafts. Displays and performances of Kashmiri culture gave no indication of the history or contested claims of the region. Such reality distortions took on particular import given the rapid escalation of violence in Indian administered Kashmir during the months the Expo was held. Given that the pavilions of Israel, Palestine, Iran, or the Arab countries also made no reference to their ongoing disputes and mutual hostilities, what we begin to see here is a presentation of the world—in all its cultural, ethnic, religious, and political complexity—in wholly benign, cosmo-politan terms. While the logics for driving this process are self-evident, most notable, the inter-secting imperatives of entertainment and diplomacy, this severing of culture from its wider social




context is not without consequence. As a platform for cosmopolitan citizenry, the Expo feigns and evades in its simulation.

Open BordersPure and unconditional hospitality, hospitality itself, opens or is, in advance, open to someone who is neither expected nor invited, to whomever arrives as an absolute foreign visitor, as a new arrival, non-identifiable and unforeseeable, in short, wholly other. (Derrida, 1997, pp. 128-129)

Pivotal to this aesthetic cosmopolitanism was unconditional hospitality, and the role of the pavilion concept in affording that. In a world of visa free expo travel, the welcome from all, to all was unconditional. Across the site, countries employed multilingual “cultural ambassadors” to help ensure that their “guests” had an enjoyable experience and left with good memories. Taking on the role of the host, they embodied that welcome with convivial smiles and spirited usherings. Somewhat remarkably, this largely unconditional, unquestioning welcome took place at a moment in history when many nation-states were deeply anxious about the rapid growth in inter-national migration and the challenges of policing their borders. Indeed, there was a distinct con-trast between the carefree stamping of Expo passports and the complex array of entry restrictions and conditions many countries would impose on their own soil to these same visitors. A number of countries offered an oblique interpretation of the “Better City, Better Life” theme, instead privileging entertainment and the imagineering of a national brand. In pavilion after pavilion visitors encountered displays of pristine beaches, historic cities, “colorful” traditions and golfing resorts, all of which suggested an unqualified desire to accommodate and host.

Other complexities were dissolved away as well, in large part due to the logistics of visitor management. The sheer scale of the event, both in terms of the number of attractions and daily visitors, meant pavilion designers were reluctant to offer much, if any, detail about the complexi-ties inherent to creating better cities, better lives. Those architects and designers familiar with the medium, and cognizant of its limitations, understood the importance of simplicity and minimal-ism, fragmentation, and simulation. The less experienced offered a combination of didactic text panels and object lessons. Regardless of the approach, in the face of an anticipated 70 million visitors in 6 months, pavilion design was oriented toward extending the welcome to as many as possible. Open layouts enabled the flow-through of thousands per hour, with exhibits carefully conceived to ensure that guests were hosted honorably, but left in a timely manner and were not made to feel as if they had overstayed their welcome. Australia, for example, was among those that controlled its visitor flows by presenting a brief “show” (Figure 6). Held in a thousand-seat auditorium and lasting about 5 minutes, this multimedia centerpiece created a rhythmic structure around which other exhibits were designed. And as the site as a whole scaled down planetary geographies, table top models allowed visitors to travel in time. Neon landscapes of wind-tur-bines, power stations, and oil rigs evoked a better future of abundant energy for all. Elsewhere, idyllic pasts and simpler times were captured in replica models of villages, historic cities, and the archaeological remains of lost civilizations. Seen together, such models seduced and concealed via utopian and nostalgic ideals.

Over the course of the 6 months the hospitality offered by pavilions extended far beyond their public entertainment spaces. Many countries and organizations capitalized on the Expo as a unique forum for cultural diplomacy. Indeed, the ability to include hospitality suites, board rooms, and catering facilities was often an important factor justifying the investment of a purpose built pavilion.14 Invariably, the incentive for hosting guests from a “rising China” revolved around strengthening trade relations. The European Commission, for example, hosted a 2-day event in the EU pavilion in order to “raise the issues which can help or hinder trade and related growth between Europe and China in a friendly environment.”15 For a sector valued at 420 billion



Winter 49

dollars in 2009, the guest list signaled the significance of this event, with the Chinese minister of commerce, the director general of the World Trade Organization, the EU trade commissioner, and various multinational company CEOs among those attending. Upstairs away from the crowds, thematically designed pavilions provided ideal venues for high-level networking and the consolidation of strategic relationships. But given that the vast majority of pavilions were national, most hospitality functions were based on promoting bilateral relations. Typical to this category, Australia hosted more than 16,000 guests over the course of 230 events in the 6-month period. In “getting the building to say something demonstrable about the country,” handcrafted furniture, fine dining, and live classical music were the vocabulary of “excellence, sophistication and quality.”16 A rolling program of “national pavilion days” created important spotlight moments for less spectacular and visible countries. In addition to public shows and parades around the site, such days typically involved presidents, prime ministers, or ministers of foreign affairs and trade flying in to host high-level delegations from the Chinese business and technology sectors. On Russia’s national day, for example, President Dmitry Medvedev was the guest of honor for a reception that facilitated representatives from Russian transport and energy sectors “to get acquainted with their Chinese counterparts and seek cooperation to develop more mature tech-nologies.” For other countries, such as Indonesia, these days were used to host informal meetings between small and medium enterprises, in an effort to promote their export markets to China.17

In broad terms, the degree to which countries were able to lavishly host their guests correlated with their position in the global economic hierarchy. Beyond the millions of dollars invested in the pavilions of the industrialized powerhouses, developing countries rented hospitality suites in the hope of attracting Chinese investors. Even for those countries with stands in the Joint Africa pavil-ion, much of their incentive for participating centered on attracting direct investment and joint ventures from a rapidly developing China.18 Indeed in a critical reading of Africa’s involvement in the Expo, Sanusha Naidu argues that the event might best be seen as an extension to the 2009 Forum on China–Africa Cooperation, held in Egypt in 2009.19 In her questioning of whether the Expo will benefit the continent, beyond its elites, we see how such hospitality enabled the types of deal making that have been criticized by those opposing the neoliberal model of globalization:

Figure 6. Australia Pavilion, main show, 2010.Source. Photo by author.




Is the Shanghai Expo going to be that platform that enables Africa to improve its economic development and propel the continent’s integration into the global economy by catching up? Or is it going to be an extension of deals and investment projects that only focuses on one aspect of Africa’s development conundrum?

It is clear . . . China’s “going global” strategy is going to be enhanced through the deals, joint ventures, contracts, mergers and acquisitions, and greenfield and brownfield investments the Chinese corporates are going to negotiate with global inc, with the Chinese leadership hosting meetings on the sidelines with strategic actors.

And for Africa this will be no exception. Is the African presence about more trade and investment deals or is there something more tangible that will benefit Africa and its people? In short who is benefiting from the Expo: African elites or the economically indigent and impoverished? (Naidu, 2010)20

Within this forum for advancing global trade, countries naturally competed in sectors where they felt their competitive advantage was the strongest: Russia promoted its expertise in nuclear power, Canada its knowledge and resources in sustainable construction, Japan its robotic tech-nologies, and Chile its viticulture. For a large number of countries, however, corporate hospital-ity had a more subtle intent. Pavilions provided valuable opportunities for constructing, advancing, or reworking a certain image, or national brand. The United Kingdom, for example, wanted to be seen as less conservative and old fashioned; an attempt to reposition its image in a fast-changing economic climate. Countries like Italy and Europe promoted their unique cultural brands, and showcased their superior craftsmanship in industries like fashion, motoring, or fur-niture. Other countries sought competitive advantage in the higher education and tourism mar-kets, two tertiary sector economies that are particularly sensitive to the intangibilities of image and stereotype. Regardless of their approach and facilities, national pavilions thus served as conduits for open-trade and the internationalization of domestic resources and markets. In this respect, it was a formulation rooted in the broad principles of a neoliberalist ideology. Not sur-prisingly then, little or no attention was given to questions of resource exploitation, inequality, poverty, labor markets, or state protection; themes which remain pivotal to critiques of the “neo-liberal model of globalization.” Once the frenzy for securing China’s attention died down and the Expo closed its doors, the “value” in all this hospitality began to emerge. In the 12 months or so that followed, company after company around the world cited Expo events and presentations as having been a key factor in the landing of commissions, the signing of contracts, the formation of partnerships, or the securing of concessions.21

Consequential Encounters?

Maurice Roche (2000) has argued that mega-events like Olympics and World’s Fairs “can use-fully be understood as playing important roles in the cultural aspects of institution-building at the global level and in the building, more generally, of systems of ‘global governance’ and global citizenship” (p. 233). The themes explored above reveal some of the key factors which determine the degree to which such possibilities can be realized. To consider this further it is helpful to briefly situate Shanghai 2010 within the recent changes taking place in the country. Widely regarded as China’s most cosmopolitan city, Shanghai’s role in the opium trade cemented its position as an important entrepôt; a city with worldly connections that Beijing would be suspi-cious of for long periods of the 20th century (Wasserstrom, 2010; Yue, 2006). But Shanghai Expo was also a notable outcome of significant ideological shifts that had taken root in the Communist Party from the late 1980s onward (Gamble, 2003). The decision to pour vast resources into the event not only reflected an enthusiasm for embracing economic liberalization but also a



Winter 51

willingness to nurture a more cosmopolitan, worldly citizenry. To this end, Expo was an impor-tant venue for visitors to acquire the cultural capital of consumption, not of material goods, but of unfamiliar culture(s). As numerous scholars have suggested, the subject of the modern, postin-dustrial society is the tourist; a citizen with the cultural and economic capital, not to mention the political freedom, to travel to and encounter other cultures (Beck, 2006; Urry, 2007). To that end, China is now embarking on an extraordinary growth in tourism. According to the U.N. World Tourism Organization the country is expected to create around 100 million outbound tourists by around 2025 (Winter, Teo, & Chang, 2009). Against this backdrop, Expo needs to be read as a unique forum of civic education. From on-site interviews conducted in June 2010 with domestic visitors, it was apparent that the vast majority knew nothing or very little about the countries they were about “to visit.”22 At the domestic level, the event also offered an aesthetic rendering of national “harmony,” between the peoples of China. One of the most heavily visited exhibits was the China Provincial Pavilion, which showcased the architecture, cultural heritage, and land-scapes of the country (Winter & Daly, 2012). Indeed, China’s decision to interpret the theme of Better City, Better Life in terms of harmony—with harmonies between “man and man,” “man and nature,” “past and future” serving as the subthemes of the event—directly corresponds with the state’s ideology for promoting a prosperous and conflict-free society via the narrative of “harmonious society.” Yet as we have seen above, it was a cultural aesthetic that sat in glaring contrast to concerns about human rights abuses which sit front and central in debates about Beijing’s approach to Tibet and Xinjiang today.

Moreover, it is helpful to interpret Expo in relation to Delanty’s (2009, p. 253) identification of the four different forms cosmopolitanism can take, each defined by the degree to which they incorporate a positive recognition of the Other. The format of Shanghai—in its design, layout, architecture, and celebration of cultural heritage—corresponds with Delanty’s account of a soft cosmopolitanism, one oriented by consumer-driven cultural appropriation and a cultural aware-ness predicated upon a supposed liberal multiculturalism. In what might be best described as a banal cosmopolitanism (Szerszynski & Urry, 2006), the event was devoid of all the political entanglements of encounters with the Other at the inter- and subnational level. When seen through a lens of governmentality, the event acted as an important element in a state apparatus (re)orienting a population toward national economic and political superiority at the beginning of the 21st century. Indeed, visitors to Expo left with a distinct image of the world, complete with a strong sense of hierarchy in the “family of nations.” And in the architecture of cultural diplo-macy, countries were unreservedly hospitable and welcoming to all who entered. Upstairs, away from the crowds, such a dynamic emerged from national economic strategies, where the impera-tives of cordial trade relations augmented the broad narrative of cross-border, free-market capi-talism. But both in the public and private spaces of pavilions the more complex realities of economic globalization were among the complexities obscured from view.

Roche (2000) argues we need to understand Expos as a “ceremonialization and celebration of the emerging global polity” (p. 243). In many ways Shanghai 2010 affirmed such a perspective, and given China’s fast growing influence in the affairs of planetary interest, the event was of global import. But the themes explored here reveal how it produced a particular aesthetic of citi-zenship and governance, wherein depoliticized, idealized notions of the corporate and individual, national, and international, were enacted on a daily basis. More specifically, the article has reflected upon this landmark event’s declarations of intercultural dialogue and harmony, and a global solidarity around the challenges of creating better cities, to argue that many of the critical, political tensions, and challenges that lie at the heart of a cosmopolitan imagination, as identified by Beck (2006), Calhoun (2002) and others, came to be excised and removed from view. In an era when China increasingly looks outward, the unforeseen consequences that might arise from detaching cultural understanding from its political complexities could well prove to be one of Shanghai Expo’s most significant legacies.




Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publi-cation of this article: Fieldwork for this article was kindly funded by the Institute for Culture and Society, University of Western Sydney.

Notes

1. Data for this article came from a collaborative project conducted by researchers at the Institute for Culture and Society, University of Western Sydney. My own fieldwork for the project involved two extended visitations to the Expo site, and this article includes material from interviews, participant observation and discourse analysis of official documents.

2. No official visitor statistics by country were declared. But reports, and accounts in the media, both print and television, placed the figure between 97% and 99% domestic. Recorded observations of arrivals at entrance gates undertaken during onsite fieldwork conducted in June and September also confirmed a more than 99% figure.

3. For further details, see Mattie (1998, pp. 75-79). 4. For further details, see Mattie (1998, pp. 101-111). 5. For illustrative map of the expo, see http://users.telenet.be/nevi/expomap/index.htm 6. See Mattie (1998, p. 239). 7. Source: http://sinotour.com/news/764.html, and this strategy was reported in various places including

http://english.cri.cn/6909/2010/01/21/1781s544131.htm 8. The following visitor milestones were celebrated in September: United Nations, 2 million (14/09);

Turkey, 6 million (25/09); Qatar 3 million (14/09); Argentina 3 million (22/09). Sources: URL no longer available.

9. At one point it was claimed that the value of complete passports was around US$850. See: URL no longer available.

10. See: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010expo/2010-08/30/content_11226703.htm11. To coincide with the Expo’s “Tibetan Week” the U.S.-based campaign Students of a Free Tibet cam-

paigned in New York. In explaining their protest, Tenzin Dorjee, the president of the Students of a Free Tibet, declared,

While the Chinese government parades state-sponsored Tibetan culture on the stage in Shanghai, scores of Tibetan artists, writers, musicians, bloggers, and other public figures have been arrested, imprisoned, harassed, or disappeared for speaking out about the aspirations, the hardships, and the deepening pride and unity of Tibetans living under Chinese occupation.

See: http://www.phayul.com/news/article.aspx?article=Shanghai+Expo(sed)%3A+SFT+launches+%22stop+the+attack+on+Tibetan+culture%22&id=28083

12. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Demolishing-Kashgars-History.html13. See: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/-Beijing-removed-Indian-maps-from-Expo-back-in-July/

articleshow/6453744.cms, and http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/china/Why-China-seized-India-maps-at-Shanghai-Expo/articleshow/6457769.cms

14. This was confirmed by Peter Sams, Pavilion Director and Deputy Commissioner-General for Australia, personal interview, Shanghai: July 2010.

15. http://www.shanghaiexpo.eu/Page/266/SourceId/733/InfoID/735/language/zh-CN/default.aspx, and see http://english.cri.cn/9055/2010/07/20/1461s584067.htm

16. Peter Sams, pavilion director and deputy commissioner-general for Australia, personal interview, Shanghai: July 2010.

17. See, for example, http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/08/04/insight-indonesian-smes-went-shanghai-boost-richinese-trade.html


http://www.phayul.com/news/article.aspx?article=Shanghai+Expo(sed)%3A+SFT+launches+%22stop+the+attack+on+Tibetan+culture%22&id=28083

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/-Beijing-removed-Indian-maps-from-Expo-back-in-July/articleshow/6453744.cms

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/china/Why-China-seized-Indiamaps-at-Shanghai-Expo/articleshow/6457769.cms


Winter 53

18. Consultancy Africa Intelligence highlights how a number of African country leaders returned home from the Expo with contracts signed on major Chinese investments. See: http://www.consultancyafrica.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=415&Itemid=213

19. http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/africa_china/6456820. www.pambazuka.org/en/category/africa_china/6456821. See for example, http://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/news/international-construction-news/

uk-architect-breaks-into-china22. Around 20 interviews were conducted with visitors at the site. They took place in Chinese and were

later translated into English.

References

Beck, U. (2006). The cosmopolitan vision. Cambridge, England: Polity.Calhoun, C. (2002). Imagining solidarity: Cosmopolitanism, constitutional patriotism, and the public

sphere. Public Culture, 14, 147-171.Delanty, G. (2009). The cosmopolitan imagination. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Derrida, J. (1997). Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A conversation with Jacques Derrida. New York, NY:

Fordham University Press.Gamble, J. (2003). Shanghai in transition: Changing perspectives and social contours of a Chinese metrop-

olis. London, England: Routledge.Greenhalgh, P. (2000). Ephemeral vistas: The expositions universelles, great exhibitions and world fairs,

1851-1939. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press.Greenhalgh, P. (2011). Fair World: A history of World’s Fairs and Expositions, from London to Shanghai,

1851-2010. Winterbourne, Berkshire, England: Papadakis.Harvey, D. (2009). Cosmopolitanism and the geographies of freedom. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.Hoffenberg, P. H. (2001). An empire on display: English, Indian, and Australian exhibitions from the

Crystal Palace to the Great War. Berkeley: University of California Press.Huang, Y. (2007). Shanghai Expo. Shanghai, China: Shanghai Century.Kal, H. (2005). Modeling the West, returning to Asia: Shifting politics of representation in Japanese colo-

nial expositions in Korea. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 47, 507-531.Macomber, B. (1915). The Jewel City: Its planning and achievement. San Francisco, CA: J. H. Williams.Mattie, E. (1998). World’s Fairs. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press.Naidu, S. (2010, May 20). Pushing the African agenda at the Shanghai Expo. Pambazuka News. Issue 482.

Retrieved from www.pambazuka.org/en/category/africa_china/64568Roche, M. (2000). Mega-events and modernity. London, England: Routledge.Roeber, A. (2008). Paris 1878. In J. Findling & K. Pelle (Eds.), Encyclopedia of world’s fairs and exposi-

tions (pp. 59-64). Jefferson, NC: McFarland.Rydell, R. W. (1987). All the World’s a Fair: Visions of empire at American international expositions,

1876-1916. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Silverman, D. (1977). The 1889 exhibition: The crisis of Bourgeois individualism. Oppositions: A Journal

for Ideas and Criticism in Architecture, 8, 71-91.Szerszynski, B., & Urry, J. (2006). Visuality, mobility and the cosmopolitan: Inhabiting the world from

afar. British Journal of Sociology, 57, 113-131.Turner, B. S. (2006). Classical sociology and cosmopolitanism: A critical defence of the social. British

Journal of Sociology, 57, 133-151.Urry, J. (2007). Mobilities. Cambridge, England: Polity.Wasserstrom, J. (2010). China in the 21st Century: What everyone needs to know. Oxford, England: Oxford

University Press.Winter, T., & Daly, P. (2012). Heritage in Asia: Converging forces, conflicting values. In P. Daly & T.

Winter (Eds.), The Routledge handbook on heritage in Asia (pp. 1-35). London, England: Routledge.Winter, T., Teo, P., & Chang, T. C. (2009). Introduction: Rethinking tourism in Asia. In T. Winter, P. Teo, &

T. C. Chang (Eds.), Asia on tour: Exploring the rise of Asian tourism (pp. 1-17). London, England: Routledge.

Yue, M. (2006). Shanghai and the edges of empires. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.


http://www.consultancyafrica.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=415&Itemid=213

http://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/news/international-construction-news/uk-architect-breaks-into-china



Author Biography

Tim Winter is Research Professor at the Cultural Heritage Centre for Asia and the Pacific, Deakin University, Melbourne. He has published widely on heritage, development, modernity, urban conservation and tourism in Asia, and is editor of The Routledge Handbook of Heritage in Asia, and Shanghai Expo: An International Forum on the Future of Cities (Routledge 2013).



Cultural Diplomacy, Cosmopolitanism and Global Hierarchy at the Shanghai Expo

Documents

Transcript of Cultural Diplomacy, Cosmopolitanism and Global Hierarchy at the Shanghai Expo