13 Aug 2010 - In the last weeks I have not reported on Shanghai's World Expo, but the event is back in the news. Shanghai's top Communist Party official has responded for the first time to allegations that visitor numbers at the Expo are being artificially inflated. The six-month long fair - the largest and most expensive Expo ever - drew far smaller crowds than expexted in its opening month of May. In June figures picked up, and the fair is now on course to reach its target audience of 70 million visitors. However, there is a widely held belief among Expo staff that the government has been ferrying large groups of retirees and students into the park to make up numbers - or simply faking official attendance statistics. Conspiracy theorists were given a boost when it was announced on 1st August that 35 million visitors have visited the Expo so far - exactly half the projected attendance rate the day after the halfway point ........
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