The 'economic Olympics'? : Shanghai 2010 after Beijing 2008

Shanghai Expo was the second early-twenty-first-century mega event held in China, following its hosting of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. These events, in turn, were the latest in a series of East Asian mega-events since the mid twentieth century that include Summer and Winter Olympic Games in Tokyo 1964, Sapporo 1972, Seoul 1988 and Nagano 1998, and expos and world's fairs in Osaka 1970, Daejeon 1993 and Aichi 2005. Mega-events are always in substantial part exercises in image management, directed externally towards the international sphere and internally to the national citizenry. They also take place in specific historical, social and spatial contexts that condition both the priorities of the messages to be communicated through staging them, and the ways in which they are likely to be received.