In the country with the world's largest number of netizens, the Shanghai World Expo organizer has high awareness to amplify the Expo's influence through the Internet.

The organizing committee is trying to provide a 3-D Shanghai World Expo garden in the virtual world, so as to make the Expo access to every netizen around the world.

"The 3-D website is unprecedented in the World Expo history," said Wang Liping, who is in charge of the 3-D Shanghai World Expo website program, in an exclusive Xinhua interview.

There are around 500 staff working around the clock to make the last-minute preparation for the website' s official opening, he added.

The website (www.expo.cn) will be officially open on May 1.

The website consists of several parts, including "site tour", "interactive community" and "future city". Clicking the "site tour",more than 150 3-D pavilions will be shown on the map.

Netizens can click any pavilions they like, then mascot "Haibao" will bring netizens to the chosen pavilion and give a brief introduction on the pavilion's major characters. Netizens can see the pavilion from different angles and in both day scene and night scene.

There's an interactive community area for netizens to share their experience of the virtual trips.

The "future city" is the most interesting and innovative part of the website.

It is similar to a computer game. After downloading a software, netizens can become one character in the game, with the World Expo garden as background. They need to cooperate with others to fulfill 207 tasks in the game.

"The 3-D pavilions are expected to be stay online even after the conclusion of the expo," said Wang.