Everyone welcome – even international pariahs – as Expo comes to China

NORTH Korea, Iran, Burma and Zimbabwe are rarely viewed as beacons of technological and economic progress. But they all put on their best show yesterday when the multi-billion-pound World Expo opened in Shanghai.

China has re-injected huge energy into the latest international exposition, a distant successor to the Great Exhibition launched by Prince Albert in London in 1851. But China has also used Shanghai-2010 to give huge boosts to countries with which it enjoys good relations – but the West does not.

North Korea and Iran, memorably named as part of an "axis of evil" by former US President George W Bush, even have their national pavilions right next to each other.

North Korea, whose nuclear weapons programme has strained ties with China, its only real ally, is taking as its theme "Paradise for the People", brushing aside the power cuts and food shortages which have afflicted the nation.

North Korea has never before taken part in international expos. Nobody knows how it has paid for its pavilion, which shows off the garden city of Pyongyang and is decorated with a large national flag on the outside and a replica of the North Korean capital's Juche Tower inside.

"The North Korea pavilion feels oppressive inside. I'm not sure why," said Chinese visitor Liu Hongqiao. "Maybe because their staff are all wearing Kim Il-sung badges, or because of their political system," she added, referring to the North's former leader and state founder.

It's not just controversial countries which are getting their day in the sun in Shanghai. All of China's provinces and regions have pavilions, including the troubled minority areas of Xinjiang and Tibet. So too do major Western nations, including the UK, whose pavilion represents a "green and pleasant land".

China has massively hyped up the Expo, generating the kind of public excitement and patriotic fervour last seen in the lead-up to the 2008 Olympic Games.

There were angry complaints about queue-jumping as lines snaked outside the Expo site, which is 20 times bigger than the last World Expo held in Spain's Zaragoza in 2008. For some Chinese, a visit to the Expo is the nearest they will get to travelling abroad.

Separate tickets for the most popular pavilions, such as China's, sold out quickly.

"This is a great event as it's a good forum to communicate with the world," said Shanghai resident Lao Chen. "But it's very disorganised. There are just too many people in China."

China says it has spent 2.75billion – double what it spent at the 2008 Beijing Olympics – to host the world's largest exhibition. It is the most expensive Expo to date and local media have reported the true cost, including upgrades to the city's infrastructure, is closer to38bn.

Underscoring the political capital China is attaching to the Expo, an event that has somewhat faded from the world's view in recent years, a host of foreign leaders attended its opening, most notably French President Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

Cosmopolitan Shanghai expects 70 million visitors will attend the Expo – an average of nearly 400,000 per day – though just 5 per cent will be foreigners.