 The competition results have been seen to have reflected the international trends of the time, or to have endorsed the critical regionalism, that is, what Aalto had referred to as "being international yet true to themselves".The individual national pavilions at the Universal Expositions, or World Expos, give each participating nation the opportunity to create a work that is supposed to make a statement or encapsulate an impression about the nation, albeit for the purpose of advertising the country for business purposes as well as cultural purposes.Finland's participation in the expositions can be viewed from economic, political and cultural-national angles; for instance, making a political statement about Finland's independence at the 1900 Paris Exposition, while still under the rule of Russia, while also making a nationalistic statement about Finland.