Construction Work on Southwest Chinese World Expo Completed ����The 100-day countdown to the International Horticultural Exposition in Kunming, the capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province, started today as construction work on the main exposition site neared completion. ����The horticultural exposition will run from May to October. About 90 percent of the construction work on the main exposition site, with five large indoor exhibition halls and six special gardens has been completed, according to Li Jiating, Yunnan's governor and the vice-chairman of the Organizing Committee. ����The organizers have spent more than a billion yuan (US$120 million ) on the 200-hectare area in the northern suburbs of Kunming, on more than 400,000 trees and 500,000 square meters of lawn at the expo site. ����Kunming has also spent more than 6 billion yuan on an urban face-lift and most of these projects have been completed for the nearly 90 nations and international organizations that have agreed to participate. ����The organizers are expecting some 10 million visitors to Kunming during the six-month exposition, more than 100,000 of whom are expected from Japan alone. ���� HomeNews 1999-01-22 Page4 Full Story in Chinese