One of the reasons for the problems on the venue planning of World Expo Osaka is that some of the important projects excluded the participation of the competitors outside Japan. So we draw a lesson that putting emphasis on local elements does not mean extremities.

China will host World Expo 2010, which is an opportunity for the international people to know China. But the problem is how many originals will be displayed on our land?

Problem one: The western design dazzles us.

Recent years Western Design has become an embarrassing word in the field of Chinese architecture. Many of the famous buildings including Shanghai Pudong International Airport Phase One, the Bird’s Nest in Beijing, the National Theatre and CCTV building, are nearly all the works of the western designers. Domestic designers are seldom seen or heard on important bidding projects.

At present there are a total of 120 Architecture Designing Firms, both Sino-foreign joint and cooperative ventures. 140 of the world top 200 architecture firms have agencies in China.

The foreign architecture companies and agencies have won the majority of biddings for the designing of the 11 Olympics 2008 venues.

Architecture Design and Research Institute with South China University of Technology won over 28 rivals at home and abroad the designing right of 2 venues. But He Jingtang, the president of the institute, was not satisfied: 'We must admit that these two venues are minor ones among the 11.'

Zhang Ye, representative to National People’s Congress of Shanghai and president of Shanghai Modern Architecture Design Group, told the journalist “We hope to introduce into China the advanced western design principles; we also welcome competition from abroad, but this phenomenon still arouses our worries.”

Zhang also noted: “China has a great many well-known buildings such as the Great Wall, the Forbidden Palace, the Summer Palace, and the Yellow Crane Tower and so on, but why do we lag behind the western designers now?”

The reasons are as follows: We have many malpractices in the profession. For example, the department responsible for the bidding did not shoulder their duo responsibilities; some local officials take originality instead of economy, practicability and appearance as the main standard, because they misunderstand political performance as establishing a landmark building during their tenure in office.

Problem two: There are evident shortcomings in China’s architecture industry.

Chinese designers still have a distance from their western counterparts. Chinese architecture design enterprises do not enjoy the international competitive edge. From the perspective of service function, the domestic enterprises, more often than not, are limited to designing services, while the foreign companies’ service range from pre-design report, feasibility research, bidding agency, price consultation and post-design administration.

(3D multimedia, architecture animation, 3D interaction)