Shanghai supernova

This was another stellar year for Shanghai and the People's Republic of China, which celebrated its 60th anniversary by emerging as the world's top auto market.

Last month, Shanghai welcomed visiting US President Barack Obama and gave the go ahead for a new Disneyland, to be built over the next five years. During the summer, Shanghai witnessed the country's first gay pride parade, marking a milestone in China's ongoing process of reform and liberalization.

On the sporting front, Russian tennis ace Nikolay Davydenko won the Shanghai ATP Masters, Red Bull-Renault driver Sebastian Vettel took the crown at the Chinese Formula One GP and golfer Phil Mickelson claimed victory over Tiger Woods in the World Golf Championships, played in Shanghai.

Further shining a spotlight on the city, homegrown NBA star Yao Ming, suffering an injury, made his way back to Shanghai to spend more time running the Shanghai Sharks - the club he bought in July.

Meanwhile, pressed by challenges on various fronts, the central government defused a number of threats to the public's health and wealth.

It issued a 4-trillion-yuan ($586 billion) bailout fund to lending institutions to stimulate GDP growth for the year and passed a new food safety law in response to the nationwide scandal involving contaminated baby milk powder in 2008.

In June, ethnic unrest in Xinjiang province was successfully mediated, while medical teams responded swiftly to contain the threat of swine flu and bird flu, showing the lessons learned from the outbreak of SARS in 2003.

If this year was stellar, 2010 looks set to go supernova.

With the long-anticipated World Expo Shanghai beginning on May 1, expect things to get bigger, better - and more crowded.

Expect better roads, more subway lines, a reconstructed Bund waterfront and, of course, plenty of new bars, restaurants and fashion boutiques to open during the year as millions of Expo tourists flood the city to see the striking array of architecture and futuristic technologies on show at the Expo.

Keep your fingers crossed for another bull run on the local stock market, and expect more legal rewrites to make life easier for the city's growing ranks of expatriates, including better social security provisions. On the flipside, property prices are likely to keep rising.

For all the news and events that are yet to be written for 2010, keep reading China Daily, your window on the changing face of modern China.

(China Daily 12/26/2009 page13)