Countdown to Shanghai World Expo begins

But officials say preparations are on track for the massive six-month event, which is due to bring at least 70 million visitors streaming into China's biggest city from May 1.

“We're confident as we've been working on this for eight years,” said Xu Bo, assistant commissioner general at the World Expo.

“Right now 90 percent of the structural work is finished and now we're starting interior work.”

Less than two years after China successfully hosted the Beijing Olympics, Expo 2010 will offer the Asian giant a new opportunity to impress the world, and organizers promise the event will be record-breaking.

The site is the biggest ever for an Expo and it will welcome a record 192 participating countries and 50 international organizations, along with the mammoth number of visitors, most of them Chinese.

“The Expo is a sign of power, and for us it's a very strong symbol,” Xu said about the first Expo to be held in a developing country, funded by a budget of more than four billion dollars.

China has also allocated US$14 billion for new highways, subway lines, road repairs and the renovation of many districts in Shanghai ─ a figure that does not even include the expansion of the city's Pudong airport.

“Shanghai has become a permanent building site,” said Xu.

Authorities also shut down 272 “very polluting” factories, one shipyard and relocated 60,000 residents to make way for the vast Expo site on the banks of the Huangpu River.

Welders, masons, electricians and plumbers are now stepping up their efforts to transform the site still full of mounds of earth, bricks and cables into a field of Expo dreams, full of national pavilions with bold designs.

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