Shanghai government has ambitious plans for the city if it wins its bid to host the 2010 World Exposition, including building a canal around a 540-hectare exhibition site spanning the Huangpu River, officials announced yesterday.

Six cities around the world are currently bidding to host the event, with many analysts calling Shanghai and Moscow the current front-runners.

A canal surrounding the previously selected exhibition site, which lies between the Nanpu Bridge and the future Lupu Bridge along the Huangpu River in southeast Shanghai, would highlight the event and improve the city's ecology, said Tang Zhiping, of the Shanghai Urban Planning Administrative Bureau.

The 113-kilometer-long Huangpu River winds across the city's downtown area. Deemed as the "Mother River" of the city, it used to be the major navigational route in Shanghai.

The riverbank site, covering 22.6 square kilometers and currently home to shipyards, chemical factories and warehouses, will be turned into a sightseeing zone complete with exhibition halls, restaurants, entertainment complexes and parks, officials said.

Parts of that area, especially downtown sections, will be used for the 2010 World Expo if the city wins its bid.

The exhibition site would be connected to the rest of the city by numerous pedestrian bridges, while subways and perhaps even a streetcar line would handle traffic inside the area, which will have limited access to cars, said Tang.

However, city officials won't say how much their elaborate schemes will cost or how long they will take to design and build.

The plans are part of the city's all-out efforts to win the event, which local leaders think will bring massive funds into the city and boost Shanghai's reputation around the world.

In a previous interview with Shanghai Daily, Vincente Loscertales, secretary-general of the Bureau of International Expositions, said hosting a World Exposition will push ahead the city's infrastructure development, bring it recognition and spur local business.

The World Exposition takes place every five years and is the planet's largest exhibition of new technologies.

Yao Mingbao, director of the Shanghai Tourism Administrative Commission, said the Expo could bring an estimated 50 million overseas visitors to the city during its six-month run, a huge jump over the slightly more than 2 million overseas travelers who visited Shanghai last year.

To accommodate that many visitors, the city must increase its hotel space by some 30 percent by 2010, officials say.

Shanghai will find out if its bid is successful in December, when the 87 members of the Paris-based Bureau of International Ex-positions choose a host city from among Shanghai, Moscow, Buenos Aires, the Polish city of Wroclaw, Queretaro in Mexico, and Yosu, South Korea.

A group of BIE officials will travel to Shang-hai next month to inspect the city's facilities.