Inset: Spanish pavilion ubder construction.

To get to the Shanghai World Expo site, you drive to the west of the Shanghai, about half an hour’s drive from downtown.

Tens of thousands of people were relocated to make way for the Expo. The site offices are on both sides of the Huangpu river, but the biggest section will be on the Pudong side, an urban area that only 20 years ago was largely marshland but is now home to Shanghai’s futuristic skyline.

Construction work is going on at a furious pace on the site, which is spread over 5km (three miles). Of the 242 countries taking part, 42 are constructing their own purpose-built pavilions, while others are joining with regional partners in giant halls representing continents, including many African and Latin American states. Another 42 countries are renting prefabricated kit pavilions.

The first thing you see as you approach the site across one of the bridges spanning the Huangpu is the Chinese pavilion, which dominates the skyline. The vast edifice is one of five permanent structures that will remain after the Expo ends. The other permanent buildings include the Performance Centre, Expo Centre, Theme Pavilion and Expo Boulevard.

Most of the pavilions will be disassembled and many of them will be sold to be used again in their home countries.

As well as providing an international platform, the Expo is important for the Chinese as it allows it to showcase its advances, particularly in areas such as scientific and technological innovation, where there is a perception that it lags the world.

Some developing countries had difficulty getting funding together and are being helped out with funding by the organisers. The Expo committee is leaving nothing to chance.

The Expo really began with the Great Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations, which was held in the Crystal Palace in London in 1851.

It has given us some of the world’s great landmarks, including the Eiffel Tower, which debuted at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889.

Spain held the Expo and the Olympics in 1992 and used both events to show how it had become a modern democratic EU member after years of Fascist rule by Gen Francisco Franco.

The Expo has its critics, who say it is a waste of money, but its defenders argue that it has cultural importance and says a lot about how host countries want to present themselves.

These kinds of debates hold very little water in China, however. Such large-scale public events are backed with wild enthusiasm by the local population, who are delighted to have the attention lavished on their city and pleased for another opportunity to showcase China’s rise in recent years.

The expo is being billed the “economic Olympics”: the World Expo.

Taking the theme “Better City, Better Life”, the expo is expected to give business in the city a major boost with more than 70 million visitors, half of them from outside Shanghai, coming to see the show during its six-month run from May 1st to October 31st.