This year, on his visit to the World Expo Museum, Mr. Loscertales said he was much impressed by the museum. In his eyes, it is not only a beautiful and excellent instrument to promote the values of World Expos, but also a way of attracting the whole international community and also the national companies and the national actors of China to this institution, in order to create fruitful exchange.

On December 13, 2018, the museum hosted the first ever World Expo Forum for Development and International Cooperation. Organizers of World Expos 2008, 2010, 2017, 2020 and 2025 gathered to reflect on past experience, seek mutual cooperation, and share visions of future World Expos.

“The museum is the most important instrument outside the Expo, to promote and to encourage people to organize World Expos,” said Mr. Loscertales, speaking highly of the role of the museum. What’s more, he thinks it is the link between past and future: “It is the present, but with a view of the future, and the memory of the past.”

In 2019, the World Horticultural Exposition will take place in Beijing. Then at World Expo 2020 Dubai and World Expo 2025 Osaka, China will also demonstrate its strengths in technology to the world. But it seems that Mr. Loscertales has higher expectations of China. He expects China to have a leading role in future Expos: “The cooperation of the museum and the BIE, I think, guarantees a very bright future. In the case of China, I am convinced that in not too much time, we are going to see some other big projects of expositions in China.”

(Vicente G. Loscertales’s wishes for China’s further reform and opening up: “Expos represent an improvement of the living condition of a country and a very important process of opening up to the world. This is what China has been doing already for more than two decades. This process is becoming more and more active and I expect in the future more great events in China as a result of this determined policy of the Chinese government of opening up to the world.”)

Story by Wu Qiong

Cameraman: Fan Yicheng