Crossposted with Planetizen.
The US Pavilion at the Shanghai 2010 World Expo is not the handsomest pavilion at the Expo nor will it be the most memorable. In fact, it is rather pedestrian, inside and out. For this it has rightly been criticized by architects, planners, designers, and its many, many Chinese visitors who, after waiting two hours to enter, are treated to little more than a few short films and corporate promotions.
The questionable quality of the US Pavilion, however, is symptomatic of a larger problem that the critics mostly have ignored, which is the "Blackwatering" of US public diplomacy: the privatization and outsourcing of every device by which America and its people traditionally have connected with other nations and cultures.
In defense circles, the term "Blackwater" is synonymous with high-priced mercenary soldiers whose unconstrained behavior threatens to derail America's military goals. Applied to public diplomacy, as in Shanghai, "Blackwatering" means missing an historic, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for authentic communication with the rest of the world.
The Shanghai 2010 World Expo is a globalist's dream become reality. For the first time in memory, the nations of the world have gathered in peace, in one of the world's most dynamic regions, to celebrate "The Century of the City." Seventy million Chinese are expected to visit in person. 100 million visitors from around the world are expected to tour the site online and via the media.
Despite sometimes garish and undecodable exteriors, inside, the pavilions tell stories, literally and allegorically, about their societies' vision of the future. Each converges on what is most relevant and important to its national situation.
The Shanghai Expo's inspiring theme, "Better City, Better Life," from which national pavilion designers have extrapolated many promising narratives. In the "Better City,"
* A quality urban development leads to better experiences and opportunities.
* Sustainability is mandatory in the urban settlement and its surroundings.
* Places and services adhere to green principles and edify urban residents.
* Happier, healthier lifestyles and social behaviors are the goal and the norm.
* Governance must be democratic: open, inclusive, and collaborative.
The US Pavilion honors none of these themes or stories. As many observers have noted, the US Pavilion is the perfect embodiment of mainstream corporate America's uni-dimensional approach to urbanity. The US Pavilion's development shares a lot with the typical commercial shopping mall:
To get started, set up a shell corporation. Lobby powerful politicians for favors and support. Spend profligately. Choose designs and materials that are conventional and ugly. Ignore landscaping. In a typical food court, push meals that are fast, fatty, and fried. In the glitzy theater, feature a pricey Hollywood feel-good fantasy. Keep it short, shallow, and light.
Promote your tenants' corporate brands. Sell stuff, lots of stuff. Use copious PR and advertising to keep critics at bay and the press subservient. Bring in celebrities to create a sense of importance.
Lastly, do not educate the public. Do not teach the American people what's at stake and why they should care. Above all, do not involve them in your undertaking - even if it is their imprimatur, their collective spirit that adds precious value that you trade on. Avoid transparency. Hide the books. Flip the property. Divide the assets. Make out like bandits.
In the end, the US Pavilion offers no vision of the future. Like so many of the busted malls at home that it so closely resembles, the US Pavilion is fragmentary and momentary, not the beacon of hope the Expo hosts expected or that the American people deserve. For a long time, pre-opening polls listed the (in concept) US Pavilion as the most highly anticipated attraction for Chinese Expo-goers, after the giant red China Pavilion. No longer. A week before the Expo, China Daily, the nation's official paper, has removed the US Pavilion from its list of important things to visit and see at the Expo.
How did things come to this sorry pass?
The US Pavilion today is the outcome of a basic policy decision to "Blackwater" American public diplomacy, outsourcing its conduct to private parties. The Bush Administration devised the policy in 2006. To cover for this historic, first-time decision not to seek a Congressional appropriation to pay for a US Pavilion at a major World Expo, the Administration began disseminating a Big Lie: that a law on the books prevented public funding. For the next two years, a careless press repeated this untruth, thus making privatization seem inevitable.
But the Rice State Department's execution was sloppy. In late 2007, for example, it published a competitive RFP for potential pavilion producers with terms intended to be impossible to meet. When, however, the BH&L Group, a team of Expo veterans led by designers Barry Howard and Leonard Levitan, came very close to fulfilling those terms, State was forced to abort the RFP on the verge of negotiations, in December 2007. The pavilion project had come too close to becoming public!
Three months later, in March 2008, without public notice or review, State sole-sourced the US Pavilion assignment to a pair with limited Expo experience but powerful inside-government connections: Ellen Eliasoph, an entertainment attorney with the influential Covington & Burling law firm (often deemed "the shadow State Department"), and former film executive and Expo dabbler Nick Winslow. They incorporated in DC as a nonprofit corporation, "Shanghai Expo 2010, Inc." (SE 2010). Fired up with a half-million-dollar cash contribution from a New Jersey herbal-medicine company (strangely, one with its operations in Shanghai), they went to work passing the hat.
SE 2010 blew through its seed capital in six months trying to sell an over-expensive, poorly designed, dull white elephant. Their $85-million US Pavilion concept, designed by Canadian Clive Grout,with a filmic centerpiece proposed by BRC Information Arts, languished without takers. Eliasoph and Winslow publicly resigned the assignment in October 2008, only to be yanked back to life by Consul General Bea Camp and her staff, apparently acting on their own recognizance.
The Consulate, press accounts allege, administered an infusion of more Chinese money and Chinese engineers redid the existing plan, eliminating such luxury items as LEED standards. The price was reduced to a still hefty $61 million. When Shanghai's substantial American expat business community protested perceived carpet-bagging; the Consulate simply excluded it from future planning sessions.
The curious cherry on this half-baked cake: sometime in 2009 the IRS awarded SE 2010, which had become essentially a commercial real-estate brokerage, with the US Pavilion its sole client, tax exempt status. That means that the American people will be picking up the tab for taxes not paid by SE 2010 and its corporate partners for the privilege of using the USA "brand" on their Shanghai store.
In February 2009, newly elected President Barack Obama appointed former opponent Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. With the Expo's hosts threatening to foreclose on the US Pavilion and reclaim its well-situated plot, Clinton picked up the phone and went into high gear, fundraising as if once again running for President. Her first committed sponsor was Yum!, the giant fast-food restaurant chain (KFC, Taco Bell, etc.), followed in close order by PepsiCo, Walmart, Monsanto, Microsoft, AT&T, and other global corporations - not exactly paragons of sustainability, healthy lifestyles, or quality urban planning, but loaded with cash.
When the dust had cleared, more than 60 multinationals - Chinese as well as American - had ponied up more than the required $61 million on terms unknown, for which they earned sizable corporate tax deductions. As the US Pavilion's only de facto investors (Congress was not involved and individual Americans were not asked to participate), these corporations essentially owned the US Pavilion. Thus the US Pavilion's shopping-mall style.
SE 2010 did one thing right: it engaged the services of the PR firm Ruder Finn and ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, two of the world's most powerful press brand managers. Their services were worth every penny The mainstream press, when it covered the US Pavilion at all, was a lapdog, uncritically adulatory. Most Americans remained blissfully unaware of the Expo or the privatization and sell-off of the US Pavilion that traded on their name.
As required by law, Clinton finally appointed attorney Jose Villarreal as Commissioner General to oversee the US' privatized Shanghai Expo operations. His authority was seriously undercut by the fact that almost all of the millions raised by Clinton had been spent before he arrived, in ways that still remain a secret.
To an experienced urban planner, it's all too familiar. The fix is in. Now try to fix it.
When the Expo opened on May 1, many chickens came home to roost.
At the Expo's "soft opening" last week, the US Pavilion was not ready. Its architecture received faint praise among architects. Its interior attractions remained to be completed. The vital US Online Pavilion, an Internet portal for the hundreds of millions of Expo fans who could not attend the Expo in person - the public face of the US Pavilion, America's online "brand" - an afterthought, was being farmed out to a Shanghai software developer. Reports that the staff and volunteers were working in problematic conditions amid managerial chaos provided scant assurance about things to come.
Now that the US Pavilion has been open for several days, its reviews, to be generous, are mixed. Visitors, after a two-hour wait, enjoy the upbeat attitude of the student "ambassadors" who greet them in Mandarin -- but few are impressed by the three films that constitute the US Pavilion's content. (One reporter noted that the price for the three shorts, about $23 million, is more than the production costs of the Oscar-winning film, The Hurt Locker.) The "American people's" sole walk-on are brief vignettes that flicker on the screen and then are gone. Chinese visitors are reported to have remarked, especially after the hype and long wait, "We expected more from America." Visitors exit the theater into a large hall dedicated to fawning over the 60-odd corporate sponsors whose names and brands are the only aspects of American life and culture to which the pavilion accords recognition.
As things stand, not much can be done to remedy the US Pavilion in Shanghai. Its construction is almost complete. Its team is largely on site. Its program of activities, such as it is, has been calendared. Most of those who will travel to Shanghai to visit the Expo, Chinese and foreigners, have already made their plans and reserved their seats.
But the future of American public diplomacy and how we deal with World Expos remains at stake. Here's what can and must be done...
Follow Bob Jacobson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Robert_Jacobson
How the U.S. Blew It at the Shanghai World Expo – By Adam Minter | Foreign Policy
U.S. Exhibit At Shanghai's World Expo Opens To Mixed Reviews : NPR
The easiest way to find them is to click on my author's name above, at the top of this article, and view my profile. It contains links to everything else I've published on the Huffington Post. (This is true for other authors, too.)
Plus you can learn about me and what and whom I think are significant about the news and among other bloggers here. Thanks for your interest. I hope we can stay in touch in the future.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-jacobson/us-pavilion-in-shanghai-f_b_594315.html
It describes the experience of the good citizens of San Antonio, Texas, who paid half a million dollars for three days in the US Pavilion to explain to the Chinese the benefits of working with and investing in San Antonio, a fine city -- and who departed with virtually nothing to show for it.
I'm fine-tuning my focus to the specific, larger issue of what "public diplomacy" means and entails in a society that economically, culturally, and politically reviles, discounts, or forgets entirely the concept of the commonweal.
I've posted another new entry on the US Pavilion following Hillary Clinton's visit, "Hillary Hits Her Hut; or, How I Was Shanghai'ed by the US Pavilion, as told by the American Secretary of State (her eyes now wide-open!), May 23, 2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-jacobson/hillary-hits-her-hut-or-h_b_586146.html
Your comments are welcome.
I've posted a new comment on the US Pavilion announcing filing of charges with the IRS. You can read more about it on HuffPost at:
"A Stalking Horse for Privatization? The US Pavilion Meets the IRS," May 20, 2010"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-jacobson/a-stalking-horse-for-priv_b_580086.html
Your comments are welcome.
There are too many stunning misrepresentations and glad-handings here to cite them all. However, a quick read of this transcript will provide all you need to realize how cynical the State Department's handling of the US Pavilion has been.
Almost nothing reported about the US Pavillon at this press conferrence is corroborated by third party accounts in the press. In fact, it's quite the opposite. But a bland, naive mainstream press eats it up.
This is how it's done in Washington these days: big smiles, warm hearts, and blatant deceits.
http://www.state.gov/p/eap/rls/rm/2010/05/141870.htm
The video comes across like a Big Tent invocation. C'mon in, leave your money at the door.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/jan-june10/shanghai_05-12.html
In a segment of tonight's New Hour, correspondent Jeffrey Brown, without blinking an eye, blithely repeats the Big Lie that the US government can't fund Expo activities. Brown is either one of the least aware correspondents working this beat or a total shill. By now everyone following the US Pavilion saga knows what's up. But Brown repeats the falsehood:
"The U.S. has kind of an interesting story. They were having some real troubles raising the money for the fair, as it is against the law to use government money to build an American display at an international exhibition like this one."
He then continues:
"The secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, stepped in, and basically started shaking the trees and -- and appointed new heads for the American delegation, and put her own stamp on the efforts to raise private money to be here. And a who's-who of American corporations have stepped up and ponied up, and there is an American pavilion."
Stupid and false. Stupid, because Brown's comment about "shaking the tree" begs the question, which tree, and how did she shake it? Apparently, uttering cliches is apparently adequate journalism at PBS. False, becasue Clinton didn't replace the people the pavilion operators. She appointed a Commissioner General to oversee, not run activities.
(continued below)
"The head of our delegation said it would have been unthinkable not to be here. And so the USA also has some of the longest lines here at the expo."
False, stupid, and pandering. There is no US "delegation" in Shanghai. This is absolutely meaningless garble. And since there's no delegation, there's no "head." Where does this guy get this stuff? And such pandering: the US Pavilion had long lines during the Expo's opening, but those lines have dramatically shortened as word got around that there's nothing inside to see that merits a visit. The long lines have migrated to Spain, Denmark, Korea, and the UK.
PBS presented similarly misleading coverage of the US Pavilion story on its Nightly Business News, April 5, 2010, when it featured Villarreal telling the Big Lie about government funding and NBN correspondent Nick Mackie gushing over the corporate takeover of the US Pavilion.
http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/onair/transcripts/nbr_transcripts_100405/
NPR has shown that some public media can provide true and fair reporting about the US Pavilion story. But PBS News shocking departures from the truth, told with an earnestness and enthusiasm that would do credit to an oil industry PR flack, show that some can't. At least where the US Administration in power is concerned, the network's objectivity and credibility can't be trusted.
http://shanghaiscrap.com/?p=5093
Why do the New York Times and Washington Post, supposedly America's newspapers of record, refuse to follow this story? What strange sycophancy prevents their otherwise able investigative reporters from studying this alleged multimillion-dollar abuse of tax law facilitated by officialdom? Their quiet only makes the story larger and more significant. Are we returning to the days of Yellow Journalism?
I would add a 6th point to what needs to be done: Host a World’s Fair in the US in 2020.
I'm the Chairman of World’s Fair Houston, a non-profit corporation tasked with bringing an Expo to the US in 2020. Our vision is to create a game-changing Fair, leveraging the unique American ingenuity and spirit of innovation.
The last US Expo was the infamous New Orleans 84: the first Fair ever to declare bankruptcy. That said, Expo 84 had a positive and lasting effect in New Orleans in terms of the touristic infrastructure and improved image.
Why 2020? In 2019 is the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing. We believe that the best way to celebrate such an important achievement for humanity is with a World’s Fair in the US.
We face daunting challenges. The most important: we need to lobby the Federal Government for the US to rejoins the International Bureau of Exhibitions, or BIE, which regulates International Exhibitions (like the IOC regulates the Olympic Games).
Fortunately, interest in Expos is increasing in the US. During the next six months there will be many trade missions to the Shanghai Fair. Our team will be joining the mission from Texas, led by Governor Perry.
We’re very excited about the possibilities of hosting a World’s Fair in the US. It is time for our country to get back into reaping the benefits of hosting the most important global gathering.
Manuel Delgado
Chairman - Houston World's Fair
info@houston2020.org
But you have some competition among other US cities! Expo archivist Urso Chappell, who runs the acclaimed Expo Museum online, is pushing for San Francisco to take that cake. L.A. and San Diego are also in the fray. Overseas contenders include Manila and Copenhagen. May the best city win!
But first we have to rejoin the BIE. Mr. President and the Congress, are you listening?
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Expo-2020-USA/107573382605753 Facebook Page for Expo USA 2020, "A multi-city effort to bring a World's Fair to the USA"
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/los-angeles-expo-2020 WSJ article on Houston's bid
http://www.2020worldsfair.com/ San Francisco 2020 Worlds Fair website
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/may/09/time-another-expo/ San Diego Union article on a potential San Diego 2020 World Expo (useful article on Expos in the USA)
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/los-angeles-expo-2020 Los Angeles Expo 2020 Petition website
Urso Chappell's Expo Museum is the go-to source of information about everything about every World Exposition and World's Fair from the 19th Century Columbian Exposition to those that haven't even happened yet, like 2012 Yeosu, Korea (The Life of the Ocean and Coasts) and 2015 Milan (Food for the World). Even the BIE refers to it often. Find all you need to know at:
http://www.expomuseum.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123499805562316993.html
by Daniel Michaels
If the US was going to outsource the project then they should have just got The Walt Disney Company and their merry band of imagineers of course. Would that have been without controversy or criticism? Well, of course not, but seriously who else can plan, design, build and execute a intellectually light yet crowd pleasing, well controlled, schmaltzy, happy faced, America is dandy as candy type expo pavilion that our average Asian friend would love. You want am E-ticket attraction right? Fire up the audio-animatronic robots, crank up the happy theme song, pump in the good ole Disney air and make sure the gift shop is well lite and you're ready to go. God knows they’d make a dollar or two while they were at it as well. Oh sure it would be a cultural abortion, but one in breathtaking digital 3-D Technicolor that could deal with long lines that had people leaving with a smile and a hot fresh Churro.
Disney aside, my main point that you seem to be missing is that creative and talented individuals from the America’s private sector should have been in charge of the pavilion rather than PR or law firms and certainly not politicians and/or bureaucrats. What could be more American than that? Pavilions under strict government control can be left to those like that of the host country of the current Expo.
I do hope that the "serious issue" you are concerned about is the outsourcing theme in the article rather then the substantially less serious nature of World Expos and Fairs. I do hope there exists some perspective here.
Finally, some people have mention the British. They certainly did a wonderful and creative job on their Pavilion. Literally the Pavilion itself. There is nothing inside. Reports are that people are waiting five hours to get inside an empty building. Imagine the reaction from those visitors.