About SPRA
The Shanghai Public Relations Association (“SPRA”), established in November 1986, is the first of its kind in China. SPRA boasts more than 200 member organizations, private, public or social, including prestigious businesses and institutions of higher learning, specialized research institutes, professional public relations (PR) firms, and specialized service providers. As a member of the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management (“Global Alliance”), SPRA has established long-term relationships with its peers in the U.S., the U.K., Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, among other countries. The 9th General Assembly of SPRA held in February 2022 elected a new board of directors, a new board of supervisors and a new leadership, with the president being Sha Hailin, Vice Chairman and Deputy Secretary of the Leading Party Members Group of the Standing Committee of the 15th Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress, and honorary presidents being Zhao Qizheng, Feng Guoqin, Mao Jingquan and Hu Wei. A few prominent figures from Shanghai and abroad serve as vice presidents and advisers.
SPRA has an executive board, a general office responsible for routine work, and a few other in-house bodies, including a legal affairs center, an international exchange center, an academic board, a business specialty committee and a professional firms committee.
SPRA serves its members and Shanghai’s socioeconomic development in line with national strategies. It boasts four event brands, i.e., Shanghai International Public Relations Forum, Excellent Public Relations Cases, the High-end Lecture and the Scholarship for Public Relations, and strives to establish itself as an advanced social organization.
SPRA places a premium on expanding international exchange and cooperation through a variety of forums, salons and cultural events that attract participants from different fields and places, and forges close ties with organizations and businesses from home and abroad in order to grow its “circle of friends.”
SPRA fully leverages its unique advantage as a social organization to conduct people-to-people diplomatic activities, compile and publish books and periodicals like Inspiring Shanghai, and bring together domestic and foreign professionals to tell an engaging China story and spread the voices of Shanghai. For example, it organized sharing sessions and academic seminars on foreign literary classics to facilitate integration and communication between Chinese and foreign cultures; co-organized “A River Dialogue between Shanghai and New York,” a forum for sharing common concerns of the Chinese and American peoples; and co-organized the “Poetic China” Autumn Poetry Fair at Jade Buddha Temple, Shanghai, a gathering of domestic and foreign friends to celebrate Chinese poetry.
SPRA pays attention to expanding its scope of service and reinventing its modes of service by visiting and surveying businesses to understand their needs for development, actively establishing a communication platform for businesses, and inviting expert scholars and heads of managerial functions to advise companies.
SPRA, as a primary-level point of contact for legislation under the Standing Committee of Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress, widely collects feedback and advice on legislative work from businesses, public institutions and the grassroots, and conducts special surveys that provide the practical basis and the public opinion foundation for legislation, contributing to developing whole-process people’s democracy. SPRA reflects social conditions, public sentiment and work advice in the form of Special Briefing, which serves as a “direct channel” connecting the private and public sectors.
SPRA tasks itself with the mission of powering the prosperity and development of public relations undertakings in Shanghai, the wider Yangtze River Delta and even the rest of China, in a bid to play its due part in the theoretical development, academic research and social practice of public relations.