The hoopla, the sparkling “new clothes” for the host city, the chest-thumping sense of nationalism that pervades the event: there is much about Shanghai in 2010 that is reminiscent of Beijing in 2008.

The ritualistic and political functions served by the World Expo mirror those of the Olympic Games, even if they are lacking in the direct competitive drama that Beijing's quest for Olympic gold engendered.

Coming so close on the heels of the Olympics also takes some of the shine off the Expo. There are limits, after all, to how many times a nation can have a “coming out” party. But then, China is a country that has, time and again, proved impatient with limits.

Nowhere was the seeming disregard for limitations more in evidence than in the years leading up to the Olympic Games. Beijing's city planners appeared to take the Olympic motto “Faster, Higher, Stronger” quite literally as its skyline soared ever upward.

The city was ravaged by cranes and bulldozers, and large swathes of it were smashed. The glossy facades that emerged from the ashes signaled a clear message about China's particular vision of consumerist, state-led modernity.

The Olympics, moreover, were used by the authorities as a kind of nationalist glue, helping to create a sense of common belonging and pride among citizens at a time when traditional social moorings were coming unhinged by supersonic growth.

But the uses to which both the Olympics and the Shanghai expo have been put are not historically unique. As Susan Fernsebner points out, China's first national exposition in Nanjing in 1910 “sought to train a domestic audience in a loyalty to both the Qing state and its project of economic nationalism.”

Despite the turbulent century between these events, the resonance is striking.

But while there is a degree of constancy across the decades, the global context is dramatically different. One parameter of this difference is the environment, and if the Shanghai expo has embraced eco-friendliness, the Beijing Olympics were promoted as the Green Olympics.

The Games made a start at recasting China, usually pointed to as an example of an environmental basket case, in a new eco-light. Beijing invested some US$12 billion in environmental projects between 2001, when it won the bid to host the Olympics, and 2008. Dozens of polluting factories were relocated from the city to its outskirts; forest cover increased by several times, thanks in part to a 680-hectare Olympic Forest Park, the largest public green space in the country.

Much of Beijing's environmental efforts were dismissed by foreign commentators as so much window dressing. But Shanghai in 2010 is different.

The economic recession in the intervening years has seen the clout of the West somewhat reduced in relation to China's strengthened hand.

And it is China that is emerging as the surprise leader in green technologies. The country's vast market and economies of scale are bringing down the cost of solar and wind energy; the “China price”—the combination of cheap labor and capital that revolutionized global manufacturing—is being replicated in clean technologies.

China has emerged as one of the world's largest makers of wind turbines in the matter of a few years, and the country has a 30 percent share of the global market for photovoltaic solar panels used to generate electricity.

In Brussels, there is much hand-wringing post-Copenhagen at the perceived loss of Europe's status as global “leader” on climate change. Small wonder, given how December's conference in Copenhagen highlighted that it is China, rather than Europe, that occupies the high table with the United States on environmental as other international issues.

But the Shanghai expo, like the Beijing Olympics before it, is a sword that cuts both ways. Spectacular international events offer the opportunity to host governments to showcase themselves to best effect. However, with a global spotlight trained on the country, domestic troubles find themselves exposed as well.

Criticisms related to ecological degradation, corruption, income disparities, and political authoritarianism dogged the Olympics, as they do the World Expo.

These are problems that, with the exception of political authoritarianism, China shares with its southern neighbor—India, soon to host its own international sporting event, October's Commonwealth Games.

But here the parallels between China's affair with big-ticket spectacles and India's more humble tryst with the same end.

India's freewheeling democracy and open media have meant that the hosting of the games has been controversial since the bid to hold them was won in 2003. Congress Party member Mani Shankar Aiyar, for example, made headlines when, as minister for sports, he poured scorn on the idea that the Games would help improve the country's global image, dismissing them as being of “little relevance to the common man” and a waste of the country's resources.

That the desirability of the Games was far more vigorously debated in India than in China was not the only difference between the two events. The actual outcome for the city of New Delhi, where the Commonwealth Games will take place, and those for Beijing or Shanghai are dramatically different as well.

In Beijing, inspection after inspection of the International Olympics Committee (IOC) revealed construction of the sporting venues to be ahead of time, until the authorities were actually asked to slow down their blistering pace. In New Delhi, on the other hand, with less than a year to go until the big event, Commonwealth Games Federation chairman Michael Fennell was forced to declare himself “extremely worried” about preparations, claiming a “serious risk” that the Delhi Games would not live up to the organizational standards of the previous two games in Manchester and Melbourne.

The differences between the Indian and Chinese engagement with large-scale international extravaganzas points to deeper differences between the two civilizations. They are beasts of opposite temperament.

If China is about the center, India is a coalition of peripheries. If China pushes, albeit not always successfully, for unity, India revels in its heterogeneity.

Dispersed and polyphonic, India is, from a Chinese standpoint, almost incoherent. And if the ability of a government to mobilize its citizenry, on the one hand, and to deliver on its promises, on the other, are seen as necessary aspects of “coherence,” the Chinese perspective is understandable.

Perhaps the most obvious division between China and India lies in a hardware-software gulf, and here again, the divergent experiences of the Shanghai expo/Olympics and the Commonwealth Games are germane.

India's continued inability to impress with stadia, roads, and other infrastructure point to both its weaknesses and strengths. Its growth can never take off in a China-esque fashion unless it is able to invest in, build, and maintain high-quality infrastructure. But oftentimes, the reasons behind the difficulties that the government has had with constructing “hardware” include “software” such as a vibrant civil society that defends the rights of those who would be disposessed or otherwise adversely affected by bold “prestige” projects.

China has none of India's problems in getting butter-smooth roads and glittering exhibition venues built. But these temples of engineering do little to address issues of individual autonomy, genuine diversity of opinion, and respect for private property, on all of which India scores higher.

But it should also be pointed out that from its inception, Delhi's Commonwealth Games ambitions have been shaped and driven by the desire to emulate Beijing. For India, or at least urban India, it is China that has emerged as the twenty-first-century benchmark against which to assess its own global standing.

In this context, Delhi seems set for disappointment. October's Games will garner a fraction of the attention of either the Olympics or Expo 2010, and deservedly so. The majority of Indians will probably not even notice. But for the urban middle classes, it will be yet another ignominious reminder of the gulf separating their country from the dragon north of the Himalayas.