Trajectory: Shanghai has breathed life into the World Expo movement because this is the 21st Century, and it belongs to China as did the 19th Century to England and the 20th to America.

FORBES: Shanghai Learns From Las Vegas: Notes On The 2010 World Expo

Since then, two events, the Beijing Olympics later that year and the Shanghai World Expo of 2010, might have served as coming-out parties for a rising China.

ECONOMIST: China's repressive new rulers

From May China will be visited by a series of foreign leaders going to the World Expo in Shanghai.

ECONOMIST: The politics of repression in China