Shanghai officials had high hopes for the 2010 event, and authorities at national level devoted tremendous resources and efforts to stage it.

The Chinese Pavilion, known as the Oriental Crown, was the most expensive and largest, costing more than $220 million and occupying over 71,000 square meters.

Operating costs for the event were 11.96 billion yuan ($1.7 billion at today's rates), the highest ever for such an expo at the time, but it still made a profit of more than 1 billion yuan.

According to the BIE, total revenue was 13 billion yuan, with 7.36 billion yuan coming from ticket sales and nearly 4 billion yuan from sponsorship.

Loscertales said the expo created a huge amount of curiosity, interest and excitement during the preparations and throughout the event.