Current Miss World Maria Julia Mantilla Garcia (L) signs an autograph for a fan
© AFP Peter ParksSANYA, China (AFP) - The final round on Saturday will see 15 finalists -- most selected by a global vote -- vie for the coveted Miss World title after nearly a month of rehearsals and charity functions in Sanya and elsewhere around China.
"It's getting exciting, I can see a lot of tension in the girls," Miss World 2004 Maria Julia Mantilla Garcia told journalists.
Mantilla Garcia has spent the past year touring the world as a goodwill ambassador and fund raiser for a series of children's charities that have taken her from Banda Aceh in Indonesia to Russia and Tibet, as well as her native Peru.
Some 400 million dollars has been raised for charity by the Miss World organization over the past 25 years, organizers say.
Aid to the needy has become central to the beauty pageant amid years of criticism that the contest is sexist and demeaning to women, and Mantilla Garcia said her experience as Miss World has been anything but superficial.
"Miss World means many things to many people... but this year the best thing for me is that it has taught me to be a better person," she said.
Global voting for the 54-year old event was introduced in 2003 and the format has been tweaked every year in an effort to find a balance between the traditional judging by panel and voting by a global audience, organizers said.
This year audience voting -- done by email, mobile phone short-messaging and telephone calls -- began in early November, with two winners each from North and South Europe, the Asia Pacific, Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean to be announced on Saturday.
Two women have already been elected as finalists by a judging panel in Sanya, with Miss Russia Yulia Ivanova winning the bathing suit contest and Miss American Virgin Islands Kmisha-Victoria Counts winning the talent contest.
Judges are in the process of choosing one more finalist, who will be the winner of the "Beauty With A Purpose" contest, which is based on the social and charity-related activities of the young women.
Eight former Miss Worlds will make up this year's judging panel, including the 1953 winner, Denise Perrier Lanfranchi.
Saturday's two-hour final is expected to have a global audience of over two billion people in some 207 countries, ranking the event as one of the world's most popular televised events following the World Cup and the Olympic Games, organizers said.
Sanya, a quiet tropical resort on the southern tip of China's Hainan Island, won the rights to host the event in 2003 after the contest sparked sectarian violence in Nigeria in 2002.
This year's contestants have been in China since early November and, besides activities in Sanya, have participated in charity events in the eastern cities of Shanghai and Wenzhou.
Sanya's hosting of the event in 2003 effectively ended a 54-year ban on beauty pageants that was imposed by China's communist leaders, who viewed such activities as "bourgeois nonsense."
Although a Miss China has yet to win the coveted title, the nation's representative this year, Zhao Tingting, is seen as a front runner, not only due to her remarkable beauty, but also because of local support.
"It is an honour for me to say welcome to my home, welcome to beautiful China," Zhao told journalists.
"The girls all love being here in Sanya and enjoyed the chance to see Shanghai and Wenzhou. It makes me very proud."
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