I recently spent some time in China and went to the Shanghai World Expo. Before I went to the Expo, I had wondered why I hadn’t heard more about it in the Western travel press. It’s supposed to be a world expo, right? Surely there was something remarkable about it?
Well, the reason you don’t hear much about it is that it’s an awful experience and perhaps also because it suggests some uncomfortable truths about the government of China that many people would like to sweep under the rug. Not only is the experience awful but the very concept of it is awful. So my advice is: don’t go.
Here’s why the experience is awful. It is, as you know, in Shanghai, on the East side of the Huangpo. So at this time of year it’s quite balmy. The new subway doesn’t conveniently connect to the expo. The closest you can get by cab is maybe three quarters of a mile from the expo itself. So you trudge through the heat, buy your tickets and finally get to the area where the pavilions are. The pavilions are large buildings that each country has set up. The general idea is that you go in the buildings and see whatever it is each country wants you to see. We got in line for the Australian pavilion. I had heard something good about it. It was a long line.
So this is the main problem: the lines are absurdly long and the Chinese are not good at lines. 99.999% of the visitors to the Expo are mainland Chinese. Some cultures are queuing cultures (US, UK, Canada, Japan) and some are not (Mexico, Italy, apparently China). So you have thousands of sweaty people in a long line trying to somehow get past you or get a two foot edge so they can get into the pavilion 30 seconds before you. When the line is over an hour long, that gets extremely tiresome.
Then you get inside and find the second problem. Inside, there is another long line that, in the case of Australia, leads up to a theater where you see a movie on a rotating screen. The movie is about how Australia is a nearby island that is a nice place whose people care about the environment and want to be good friends with China. It’s about 5 minutes long and, yes, is as insubstantial as it sounds. So the second problem is that you have waited all this time for nothing. Unlike expos in centuries past, where people have demonstrated new technology and products, this is apparently one where people share fatuous movies about how much they like China.
When you’re done with the movie, you go to the souvenir stand where they have stuffed koala bears. That’s probably the best part.
So, who’s up for the Saudi Arabia pavilion? Uhmmm…how about nobody. We realized after Australia that you could go into the gift shops without waiting in line so we just went to a few gift shops.
OK so the Expo is not a great experience for Western tourists. What of it?
Here’s the ethical problem with the Expo. The audience for the expo are the Chinese people. The Expo is not about the world coming together to share ideas, it is about the Communist Party of China, abetted by the nations of the world, making a statement to the Chinese people. Look at this in context: the Chinese people only get the information that the Communist Party wants them to get. You can’t get Facebook in China. You can’t get Twitter in China. Certain Amazon.com detail pages are blocked in China (like this one). They imprison people who speak out against the government. The goal of the Communist Party (which is no longer “communist” in any economic sense and should really be called the Chinese Fascist Party), is to stay in power. They want to avoid another Tiananmen Square incident and they want to avoid getting kicked out like their cousins the Communist Party of Russia. So they also manage a year round propaganda effort communicating the idea to the Chinese people that the Party is taking the country to new heights. The Expo is part of that effort.
This may be an elaborate metaphor, but imagine a villain who falsely imprisons some innocent people. At first a few try to escape, but they are killed. The remaining innocent people hope that the sheriff will find out about this and save them. One day the villain has the sheriff over to tour his house and have dinner, just to show the prisoners that everyone who might save them is friends with the villain, and they might as well get on board. (In the movie version, one of the prisoners would slip the sheriff a note as he leaves the dinner – “HELP US!”)
I am not saying that most people in China consciously hate the regime there. Like the people of North Korea, they are to a large extent brainwashed. They are not a free people, and they do not have access to information the government does not provide. So they might think they love the regime or if they have complaints they might not voice them. There is no way to know what they think, or what they would think given information and the freedom to speak. They are prisoners of a ruling junta which is sad. The junta has done some things that have helped the Chinese people, but still the people are prisoners.
Should we be party to that? Should we be party to the manipulation of the Chinese people? Should we, as the sheriff, tour the villain’s house and smile, showing the prisoners that everyone in the world, including the world’s flagship for freedom, supports the villain? The Expo is a way to pander to the Communist Party of China by helping it manipulate the Chinese people. In my view, we should not be a part of it.
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