Global and Multicultural Public Relations

12Public Diplomacy and Corporate Foreign Policy in Government Institutions and Agencies

Keywords

public diplomacy; country reputation; national identity; corporate diplomacy

Central Themes

• Public diplomacy is, to a significant extent, concerned with identity, reputation, and mutual relations between nations and individuals that require trust and build nations' brands.
• The variety of efforts of governments and corporations to build national, and even city, identities and to engage with people of foreign nations is evolving constantly.
• Factors such as people or human capital determine how the people of a nation are perceived by the rest of the world.
• Corporate diplomacy is not merely the participation of organizations in public diplomacy initiatives.

Introduction

China paid for and helped build a stadium in Costa Rica at a cost of $105 million (Manfred 2011). Costa Rica's soccer federation also received a significant amount of cash from a Chinese company. The reasons for such a significant sponsorship may be related to a potential trade agreement to be signed between the two nations. Noteworthy is the fact that the tiny Central American country has historically been an ally of the also tiny island nation of Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province. Because it is not easy to determine how closely the company in question is related to the Chinese government, this case may be an example either of public diplomacy (a government‐ or state‐led initiative) or of corporate ...