Chinese Cultural Influences On Public Relations Practices In The Mainland

Public relations had been introduced to Hong Kong in the early 1960s. But in the mainland, the Chinese concept of public relations did not emerge until 20 years'later. Through over a decades'development, public relations in the mainland has exhibited some distinctive phenomena. The mainland publics hence stereotype public relations practitioners as"social butterfly"or"talents good at Gao guanxi". Under the influence of Chinese culture, it demonstrates itself in ways far different from it used to be in America, its birth place, and other western countries. People's misconceptions of public relations once handicapped its development in the early time. Marketization, Competition and Globalization are three-folded forces redefining public relations practices, making it increasingly essential in nowadays. Extensive studies on this field had been done by scholars abroad. Part of them are aware of the cultural influences on public relations. Chinese scholars in the field of psychology and sociology also show their enthusiasm on this topic. However, most emic studies are centered on some fixed titles as"Guanxi"and"Confucianism". This research is the first attempt to apply western cultural theories to public relations practices analysis. It intended to find the correlation between cultural characteristics and public relations models.The first chapter introduces public relations, from its history to definition then to theories. After informing the public relations terms, comes the introduction of culture and cultural dimensions in the second chapter. The third chapter discussed about the research. This thesis divides the research into two parts, respectively adopts the methodologies of descriptive approach and quantitative approach. Part A did an literature study of researches relevant to the author's assumptions—correlations exist between high power distance and the personal influence model/the two-way asymmetrical model; collectivism and the two-way asymmetrical model. The second part replicate Taiwan scholars research to testify those hypotheses Finally, the author admits limitations and suggests ways of doing future studies in the last chapter.