Yes, it's about showing off new-found wealth - to it's own people!  Makes everyone feel proud to be Chinese.  The guys I work with in Shanghai have asked me if the Expo is famous outside China, and I have to tell them that, unfortunately, no one cares.  But that's not what it's about.  A strong sense of pride and nationalism helps the government maintain the "social cohesion" they care so much about.

And also to maintain social cohesion, the Chinese government must avoid unemployment, meaning that they must maintain growth, and therefore must continue the building program.  The Expo was a good way to create a lot of continued growth in the Shanghai region.

World Expo wraps up, drawing 72m visitors
October 31, 2010 - 12:39PM
               
AP
China's biggest tourism event ever, the Shanghai World Expo, wraps up on Sunday after introducing a record 72 million visitors to a smorgasbord of cultures and technologies meant to illustrate its theme of urban sustainability.
The massive, six-month event aimed at showcasing China's rise as a modern industrial power drew mainly local visitors, many of them ordinary folk from the provinces who flooded into the city by the tour busload-full, cramming the city's hotels, subways and other public places.
Most patiently braved waits of up to 10 hours at some popular national pavilions, sweltering summer temperatures, long walks and other inconveniences for what could be once-in-a-lifetime direct contact with foreign places and people.
Highlights included Denmark's famed "Little Mermaid" sculpture, a rooftop cable car ride above a replica alpine meadow at the Swiss pavilion, famous impressionist paintings from the Louvre at the French pavilion, and entertainment by Cirque du Soleil courtesy of Canada.
"Thanks to the expo, people like me who never would have a chance to go abroad can experience the whole world," said Zou Aiguo, a retiree from central China's Jiangxi province whose son gave him an expo tour as a present.
"It's my first time to Shanghai, the most prosperous city in China, and I'm very excited," he said.
Not everyone was pleased by the event, least of all some of those unhappy with being forced out of old housing to make way for the expo zone, but such criticism gains little traction in a country that vigorously suppresses public dissent.
Eager to make its world's fair the biggest ever, China spent 28.6 billion yuan ($A4.4 billion) on the event itself, and many billions more on improving subways, roads, tunnels, airports and other public facilities in this metropolis of more than 20 million people. The entire city got fresh paint, new landscaping and flowers and a kaleidoscope of decorative lighting.
World Expositions began with the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, which marked the coming of the Industrial Revolution, and have often been the forum for introducing new technologies, foods and innovative ideas.
In keeping with the event's motto, "Better City, Better Life," Shanghai was striving to make its fair a "green" one. It deployed electric buses and carts and installed energy-saving air conditioning and water filters meant to cut use of bottled water. It also recycled rain water and made use of solar power.
Organisers even limited where visitors could smoke, though enforcement was lax, especially at night.
Altogether, some 814,000 volunteers, both from overseas and inside China, helped to keep the average 370,000 visitors a day moving to and through the venue relatively smoothly, though it was standing-room only when attendance hit a peak of 1.03 million on October 16.
"The pavilions look great from the outside, better than I expected, but I'm not convinced it's worth waiting for hours in lines to get in," said Liu Xiaoyin, who drove her 13-year-old daughter to Shanghai from a nearby city.
"Anyway, we came over to have a look. After all, it is happening in China, so we Chinese should not miss it," Liu said.
The 72 million who managed to get to the event surpassed the previous record of 64.21 million visitors who attended the 1970 fair in Osaka, Japan. Achieving the record was an absolute must in a prestige-obsessed country with a penchant for overshooting numerical targets.
Apart from the jobs-creating construction and services before and during the event, the Yangtze River Delta region, including Shanghai, reportedly reaped 80 billion yuan ($A12.29 billion) in tourism-related spending.
The next expo, in 2012, will be in the South Korean port city of Yeosu, with a similar theme of "Green Growth, Blue Economy", or marine-based sustainability. After that the expo will move to the Italian city of Milan in 2015, with a focus on food safety.
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking- ... 20101031-178n1.html

thank god for that, anytime china hosts a major event with tourists where they are in the world spotlight they start trying to deceive the rest of the world.

I ran into an old coworker today.  He told me he had just come back from the world expo and that it was ended.  I told him that it would have been nice if I could swing by to see it if it did not end.  For some reason, he tells me that if I go, I would still be able to see somethings and that although the world expo is officially over, it was still open for the locals and foreigners could still buy tickets.  is this guy full of sh*t?  Or can I still see the expo when I fly out this month?

your friend isn't full of shit, but he's left out some details.  Most pavillions will be closing, you will definitely not get the full experience, but for sure the China pavillion will still be up and running as they just can't get enough of themselves.

The Expo is closed for now but will reopen on Dec 1st to the public. Not all the pavilions would be operational, only about 30% or so but at least it would be less crowded. Good time to go but could be a bit chilly in December.

Anything that makes it less crowded is better.  The outside of a lot of the pavilions are better than the inside anyway.  The China pavilion is worth seeing if the wait is under an hour.  IMHO.

Great.  Thanks for those dates.  I think I may have to go another time then if they don't open until Dec.  I was only gong tostop by if it was along the way.  It kind of sucks that most of the Pavillions will close but it's better than nothing and at least I'll avoid the lines.

I also went to the Shanghai Expo and agree with everything said above.  Was it worthwhile? Yes, if you have never gone there before it might be worth a shot.  Would I go back? No.  The only reason I even went there this time was because I happened to be in Shanghai at the time during my travels.