David Ferguson: Thank you. I think you've already answered quite succinctly my next question, which was how the Olympics and the Expo compare. So let me move on to ask you: how are the people of Shanghai being directly involved and given ownership of the Expo, in comparison, for example, with the Olympic volunteers?
Zhou Hanmin: This is truly a very good question. You know, the success of Shanghai World Expo never develops only from the efforts of the host country or the venue city of Shanghai. It develops in a very strong iron trinity:
One angle is the hosting country and the city of the venue; second all the participants; the third – people, especially youngsters. I will say, as a matter of fact, volunteers for the Beijing Olympics were so successful in demonstrating their warm, heart-felt, and enthusiastic contribution and support to this big event. We take it as a big example. We are going to have more than 100,000 volunteers for Shanghai World Expo on the basis of one individual volunteer can work for two weeks. So we need 100,000 volunteers. We are starting already the recruitment and training process. We do hope the contribution by those youngsters could be very well supported and backed up by the contribution of the whole nation.
David Ferguson: Moving on then to the organization and logistics of the Expo. Apart from finance, which I would like to move on and deal with subsequently, what have been the biggest technical problems that you faced in preparing the Expo?
Zhou Hanmin: The Shanghai World Expo is well organized into three layers: At the national level, we have a national organizing committee headed by Vice Premier Wang Qishan. He is also in charge of all the battles against financial crisis in China. And secondly we have an executive committee. The executive committee is headed by Mr. Yu Zhengsheng. He is a politburo member and also the Party secretary of Shanghai. I am serving as the Vice Director. And the Shanghai Bureau for World Expo is a day-to-day organizer of this big event.
So the logistics of World Expo in Shanghai is in downtown area of the city, in total 5.28 square km. As it is in a downtown area on both sides and both banks of the Huangpu River, the mother river of Shanghai, it is not a virgin island at all. We used to have over 18,000 family households involving over 55,000 Shanghai citizens. We used to have over 272 factories, mills and corporations, including the founding factory: a shipyard, the Jiangnan Shipyard. It was a founding shipyard to demonstrate the modern industry of China. Within 18 months time all factories and family households were moved onto new sites, brand new sites to let them to enjoy the theme of the Shanghai Expo: "Better City, Better Life".
So now you mention the biggest challenge for World Expo in Shanghai. I will say it is the challenge of the scale. Because now 231 countries and international organizations have confirmed their participation, plus another 50 UBPA cases – by the way I do hope you see that the Oxford dictionary will some day take UBPA into the dictionary. This is a new term: Urban Best Practices Area. And now we have another 16 corporate pavilions. This scale is the largest ever in the whole of history.
Plus we are going to have 70 million visitors which means for each day at least four hundred thousand visitors will come from all different areas down to Shanghai, down to this very important Expo site. So the challenge is how to organize well, how to manage well. This is the top priority in our preparation. That's why Shanghai is now expanding its infrastructure construction to further better its service in all those sectors. For instance, the expansion of two international airports in Shanghai has been done already. Up to today the air capacity for passengers could reach 94 million per year through these two international airports.
We are now constructing another railway hub, to be the largest one in Asia, we call Hongqiao hub. After its completion early next year, the total capacity for passengers by rail could reach 81 million per year.
The foremost project is the construction of the metro, we started from nothing 15 years ago. Now we have 9 metro lines. The total lines are 234 km long. Now we are constructing another five. By the end of April next year we are going to have 13, a very lucky number for us. The total line length will reach 400 km. The daily capacity for metro passengers will reach 6.5 million. It is a daily capacity.
So in short, the challenge in management and organization, we take it very seriously.
David Ferguson: Thank you again. You anticipated my next question in explaining how the city is going to deal with the volume of its traffic. Thank you.
