China’s real estate bubble has popped and air has gone out of the market. This is a PR headache for the government. Many Chinese invested in apartments as their principal form of savings and wealth. Now it is in danger of disappearing. Bureaucrats can attempt to re-inflate prices, but it will only prolong the time until they plummet again. The problem is that China is over-built for the population it has. The poor can’t afford to live in new high rises. The middle class has purchased tens of thousands of them on the expectation that someone will live there someday. I asked a friend who recently traveled to China whether news reports of empty cities are true. He assured me they are. How can the technocratic government ease the burden and still maintain GDP growth? It has put in draconian measures but they might not be enough. Developers meanwhile have sparked protests because they are discounting to attract more buyers, and banks are holding millions of mortgages that could be underwater. This is a dangerous time for the central government and how it communicates to citizens who are watching their hard-earned money disappear.
Something To Think About
Wearable computing is nearly here. Is PR ready for it? How will we change strategy and communications to account for Google Glass and body sensors? Individualized communication will come to the fore as it has already done with social media. However, wearable computing is a step beyond. It is instantaneous and in many cases will not require input from the wearer. Of course, a concern that has arisen already is loss of privacy. That will happen to anyone who decides to wear a computer in some capacity. But, implicitly, the wearer is giving electronics the right to record, to transmit and communicate. It is not too early to consider how PR should use the computerized body to send messages and build support.
New Isolationism
Americans want their military forces to stay home. The globe may be small today with international flights and worldwide manufacturing, but that doesn’t matter. The public is tired of engaging terrorists and Taliban. Well they should be. It has been more than a decade that the US has been fighting against terrorism. Unfortunately, the world is marginally safer now than it was. This means that the current and next president have a PR job to do to convince the public that the US must stayed engaged with other nations whether we like it or not. It might not be easy, especially with the pull-back of forces from the Middle East. One might question who appointed America to be the police force for the world. The country took on that role post World War II in the face of communism. Now the exchequer is exhausted, the debts piling and the cost of armaments skyrocketing. It’s time for others to take over, but that doesn’t mean the US should seal itself off. It is a member of coalitions and not the driver. Maybe America’s citizens will accept that.