Evolutionary public relations in China, Japan and South Korea: A comparative analysis

With about 1.3 billion people, China is the world’s most populous nation, constituting 21 percent of the global total. China has, since the 1980s, been developing rather rapidly, with an average double-digit GDP growth rate in the past two decades (World Almanac and Book of Facts 2006). Its government is one of the few remaining communist régimes, even as the country is transforming itself from a command economy to a market economy with “Chinese characteristics”. The social transformation in China is also breathtaking: a centuries-deep agricultural society is advancing directly into an information age. It is with similar rapid change that public relations practice has evolved in China.