Tips for an excellence PR’s practice

(or when the Maoism invented the Personal Influence Model)

NO, sorry, this won’t be one of those articles offering you the 10 tips to become a super PR professional. Here we will simply explain one successful PR logic in a particular context: The Personal Influence Model. Based in guanxi and harmony, this could be according to J.Z. Hou in her recent study an alternative fifth model for a PR excellence or the logic to understand the emerging ‘field’ of public relations in China. 

And, YES, as counterintuitive as initially it might sound, China is booming in their PR field like two important events suggest: their major participation in international organizations, for instance hosting few days ago the last G20 Summit in Hangzhou (China contributes to more than 30 percent of global economic growth); and their increased role as a development assistance (there are more than 500,000 registered NGOs working at a national level but also overseas with a remarkable intervention in Africa).

In this study, Hou, answering the call for a more socio-constructionist approach in PR research, explains the current situation of the field in China considering their own context and cultural values. Constrained by the structure, a market-oriented economic system and the elite-authoritarianism logic imposed by a communist framework, the Chinese PR’s field has found its own path and agency.

Let’s go through it.

The enabling logic of guanxi


Guanxi or ‘’how Chinese PR actors draw on mutual trust and favor exchange to facilitate and enable PR practices’’ would be wrongly considered by a western culture as bribery. However, for a Chinese perspective this is an inexpensive give-making and open well-known practice -included in most of the firm’s operative budgets-, which enables to build confidence between parties and sustain longstanding relationships. As described in the study, Chinese market is full of uncertainty and thus people need to rely on others and reduce risk trough guanxi, meaning favor exchange but also creating obligations. This inevitably remind me Mauss’ work “The gift” and the obligation to reciprocate: ‘’giving’’ as self-interested value -which fostered wellbeing in our archaic societies- can promote solidarity, reciprocity, as well as concern for the other. Then I ask, having clear the limits of the western idea of bribery, is this that evil?

The mediatory logic of harmony

Defined as a ‘’dynamic process through which two sides of contradiction and differences co-exist and interact in a non-confrontational way’’ is the way Chinese PR’s ‘’draw squares in a circle without breaking the boundaries’’. In other words, this is how they negotiate and reach agreements without violating the strict rules of the elite-authoritarianism logic. And again I wonder, not all of us in our PR practice have a master or a social constraint to our action? And, think inside of the box to keep harmony, is not also a good exercise?

To briefly summarize, Guanxi and harmony, two traditional Chinese values, probably not well understood for our contemporary western societies (where apparently the principals of freedom and pluralism prevail), have successfully empowered the Chinese PR profession, framed in a paradoxical context of a neoliberal economy and an authoritarian political regime. 

As a final question, shouldn’t we have a closer look at it?

About the author: Isabel is a cultural professional doing sometimes PR stuff and currently trying to understand them in a Master of Corporate Communication at UvA.