What Best Represents China?

World expositions outweigh other global fairs in duration, coverage and its social effects. And it has become a topic of tremendous significance and attraction nowadays to consider the relationship between China and world expositions. This paper attempts to examine the history from the late Qing Dynasty to the present when China has been participating in world expositions. It also aims to clarify the cultural importance China manifests to the world in these events by closely examining the selection of exposition demos, the construction of exposition halls, the patterns, organization of exhibitions and the influential forces involved.It is obvious that China's participation in world expositions has been characterized by the stable use of the traditional elements in its demos and exhibition halls. Contrary to the need of tradition, the demand for modernization has gradually boosted the percentage of contemporary demos and has modernized exhibition techniques; therefore, the conflicts between the modern and the traditional have formed the uniqueness of China's involvement. In the search for the crucial power behind these, we become aware that:in the early years of late Qing Dynasty, participation in the exposition could be more or less done out of curiosity; from the last years of late Qing Dynasty to the period of the Republic of China, out of protecting the national reputation and financial interests; in the era of People's Republic of China, out of the need of spreading the Chinese culture against the multi-cultural environment. Yet throughout the three stages, China has not disavowed with its tradition-dependent identification, which is usually taken as a backward in the process of modernization. However, this view bears a confrontational relationship between leaning from the West, criticism against the tradition resulted from the Western impacts and sustaining the tradition for the national self-reliance. In the conflict, China fails to extract any cores of national identity from tradition; the lack of national subjectivity also prevents the thorough outward expression of the nation's tradition and modernization. Western countries tend to have the impression that China has lagged behind while Japan is well advanced in that China has not managed to exhibit its modernity as fast as Japan has. Western countries may marvel at the foreign sight of China; yet they might also criticize it due to the undeveloped state they label China as. Yet as China progresses at a faster pace in modernization and, particularly since the 1980s, in politics and economy, whether its changeless performance in cultural output could or not win praise from the rest of the world remains an unsolved problem.This paper discusses from appearance to underlying causes China's dilemma of exhibition in world expositions. It also makes several suggestions to the urgent problem of how to effectively present China's national image and boost interactions in an open manner. First, China should express its contemporary element by joining the problems and solutions encountered in modernization with the current reality, instead of displaying itself in illusory codes with its conflicting tradition and modern technology. Second, it should focus on selecting the appropriate symbol of national image from the sprit level of modern China, not confining to the temporary response received in a specific communication context. Third, it should pay due respect to the trend of cultural and artistic diversity as well as manifest national image from multiple standpoints. Forth, it could set up a novel and confident mode of self-expression in the context of globalization by institutional reforms, increase in the space for public opinions and the establishment of new national subjectivity against the competing discourses.In a word, how to effectively present the national image and to open the interaction in world situation? I hope the paper can provide some reminds for this urgent and realistic problem.