Shanghai Expo Sets Record With 73 Million Visitors
And, this is how you achieve that record. Live and learn. Only in PRC.
When city officials here promised the biggest and best World Expo ever, they were not just blowing smoke, as Tao Renran and 60 co-workers at a state-run garment factory found out recently when they were asked to visit this year’s Shanghai World Expo.“We were required to come, otherwise, they said, they would cut our wages,”
According to tourism experts, state employees and government bureaucrats from virtually every part of the nation were ordered to pile onto buses, trains and planes and head to the Expo 2010 in Shanghai, this year’s singular national event, which ended on Sunday.
State-run tourist agencies had travel quotas, and state companies handed out free vouchers good for a one-day visit, all in the hopes of helping pump up the numbers.
This government campaign had a simple but noble objective: helping the six-month-long Shanghai Expo reach its target of 70 million visitors, which would shatter Japan’s Expo attendance record of 64 million, set in Osaka in 1970.
Breaking the record was a matter of national pride, and in a country with a history of mass mobilizations and state propaganda, reaching the target was not a question of whether but when.
Of course, only 5.8 percent of the visitors — about 4.2 million — were foreigners, according to government data.
It is known, for instance, that in 2008 the Beijing Olympic torch relay was masterfully stage-managed for millions of viewers of state-run television here, with crowds bused in to line the relay route and cheer on the torch bearers. Soon after the torch runner passed by, the cheering crowds were ordered to get back onto their designated buses and head to the next location along the route, where they were expected to cheer for the cameras all over again.
And, you Yindoos couldn't stage manage the CWG like the gifted Chinese?
