Executive Summary
The operating environment for multinational corporations (MNCs) has undergone a structural shift. Geopolitical volatility, the weaponization of trade policy, and increasingly assertive regulatory environments across major markets have narrowed the playspace for global business. In this environment, two functions — government/public affairs (GA/PA) and communications (comms) — have migrated from the organizational periphery to the strategic core.
Yet, in many MNCs these functions still operate in silos. This report argues that siloed operation is no longer a structural inefficiency: It is a strategic liability. In an era where policy dynamics dictate market parameters and a single misaligned message can trigger regulatory backlash or consumer boycott, separating corporate narrative from political reality is an unacceptable risk. Fusing GA/PA and comms into a singular strategic engine has transcended standard best practice. It is now a business imperative for safeguarding companies’ license to operate and ensuring long-term commercial resilience.
The practical implications for senior leadership are both structural and immediate. MNCs that continue to separate these functions risk exposing themselves to avoidable crises — whether a regulatory action that communications was not positioned to manage, or a public narrative that undermined relationships GA/PA had spent years building. Those that integrate them gain something more valuable than efficiency: They gain the organizational capability to shape their operating environment rather than simply react to it.
This report sets out the case for integration, illustrates why it matters most in markets like China, and identifies four concrete actions that senior leaders can take now to build an integrated GA/PA and comms function that is fit for today’s geopolitical reality.
The New Operating Reality: Permanent Volatility
For the better part of the past decade, executives treated geopolitical disruption as a cyclical challenge to be managed through. That assumption no longer applies.
The consequences are no longer theoretical. Tariffs and export controls now directly influence supply chains, market access, and investment decisions. The bifurcation of the global economy into competing geopolitical blocs has placed MNCs in an increasingly uncomfortable position — pressured simultaneously by home governments and the governments of the markets in which they operate. Regulatory assertiveness has intensified in all major economies, including China, the U.S., and the European Union (EU), each with its own political logic and its own expectations of foreign companies.
For MNCs, the cost of being caught on the wrong side of geopolitical divides has never been higher. Many lack the organizational infrastructure to monitor, interpret, and respond to these dynamics with adequate speed or sophistication. Research also suggests that most CEOs lack full visibility into their company’s exposure to political risk across their operations, markets, and suppliers — a gap that materially limits their ability to set geopolitically robust strategy.[1]
The result is a dangerous asymmetry: The political and regulatory environment is moving faster than most companies’ organizational capacity to anticipate, interpret, and respond to it. Reputational risk compounds this exposure. In markets where media, activist campaigns, or politically-driven consumer movements can amplify criticism of brands within hours, the cost of a misread signal or an uncoordinated response is not merely reputational — it is commercial and operational. It does not help where governance systems still prioritize short-term earnings over strategic foresight, as this leaves companies exposed when global shocks cascade into regulatory blowback or reputational crises.
This is the new normal. The question for senior leadership is not whether to adapt, but how to build the organizational capability to navigate it.
Government and Public Affairs: From Cost Center to Strategic Asset
The elevation of GA/PA within the corporate hierarchy over the past decade reflects a hard-learned lesson: Regulatory and political environments are not background conditions for strategy, they are determinants of it.
Across markets, an effective GA/PA function now delivers a mandate far broader than traditional government liaison. It acts as a strategic accelerator that connects executive decisions to market realities — translating regulatory trends into actionable intelligence, mapping key stakeholder landscapes, and building the relationships needed to advance business priorities. It provides foresight on policy developments before they become constraints and executes proactive engagement strategies that position the company as a constructive participant in the markets where it operates rather than a foreign actor extracting value.
The business case is direct. In markets where regulatory hospitality is a primary driver of opportunity, a company’s ability to anticipate policy trajectories and manage key relationships has a tangible impact on commercial outcomes. When governments act against a company — through investigation, public censure, or policy restriction — GA/PA’s proximity to the regulatory environment means it understands the drivers and can lead an effective response.
China is the market where this function’s value is most visible and most tested. Beijing’s regulatory environment is uniquely opaque: Policy shifts are often signaled through informal channels before formal announcement, and regulatory intent is frequently shaped by political priorities that are inaccessible to outsiders without sustained, trusted relationships on the ground. The gap between companies with effective China GA/PA functions and those without is not marginal — it is the difference between early warning and reactive crisis management. But the same principle applies, with varying intensity, across regions like Southeast Asia, the Gulf, Latin America, and increasingly in Western markets where political scrutiny of foreign companies is rising.
The organizational evidence reflects this rising importance. Across leading MNCs, GA/PA functions have been elevated to direct Executive Committee (ExCom) reporting lines — a structural shift that reflects how central political and regulatory intelligence has become to strategic decision-making in complex markets globally.
Communications: From Messaging Function to Reputational Risk Manager
The comms function has undergone a parallel transformation. The rise of social media, geopolitical polarization, and activist-driven discourse has made reputational risk faster-moving, harder to predict, and more consequential than ever before. This has fundamentally changed what effective corporate communications requires, and the stakes of getting it wrong are commercial, not just reputational.
In politically complex markets, the challenge is compounded by the need to manage competing narratives simultaneously. MNCs today must craft messaging that resonates credibly with local regulators, consumers, and media — while managing the reputational implications of that same messaging for home-market governments, investors, and the public, who may view the company’s presence in certain markets through an entirely different political lens.
China presents this challenge in its most demanding form. Companies operating there must build a credible story about their commitment to the market and their contribution to national development priorities — articulating what their presence delivers for China’s economy and society. But that same narrative must be calibrated carefully to avoid triggering concern among Western regulators, investors, and consumers who increasingly regard deep engagement with China as a strategic or reputational risk. The space between these two audiences is narrowing, and the cost of misjudging it is rising on both sides.
Past events have demonstrated how quickly this can become a crisis. When MNCs’ public positioning is perceived as inconsistent with local political and social expectations — in any market where sensitivities run high — the response can be swift: media amplification, consumer backlash, and regulatory pressure. This erodes companies’ social license to operate and reversals, when they come, are costly regardless of the audience they are aimed at satisfying.[2]
This is not a communications challenge alone. The ability to calibrate messaging for multiple, politically complex audiences — in real time, under pressure — requires deep knowledge of the policy and political environment that only GA/PA can provide. A communications function operating without that intelligence will consistently find itself reacting to crises it did not see coming.
Without this integration, companies face a structural vulnerability: GA/PA may succeed in building regulatory relationships that a poorly calibrated communications strategy then undermines; comms may craft narratives that are commercially compelling but politically tone-deaf in markets where that distinction has direct regulatory consequences.
The Integration Imperative
The case for integrating GA/PA and comms rests on a simple but powerful insight: In a policy-heavy, reputation-sensitive environment, neither function is fully effective without the other.
In an era where commercial strategy is structurally bound to geopolitical realities, organizational decisions are immediately subject to political and societal scrutiny. Mitigating this vulnerability requires an integrated model, where policy intelligence, stakeholder management, and strategic messaging operate under a shared mandate and inform one another continuously. By embedding this combined function across all business units, enterprises can pre-emptively decode how operational choices will resonate externally. This structural cohesion transforms the integration between GA/PA and comms into an offensive asset, driving rapid crisis resolution and securing the regulatory headroom necessary for long-term growth
In practice, integration creates compounding value across three dimensions:
- Policy Intelligence Informing Narrative: GA’s visibility into regulatory intent, policy trajectories, and stakeholder sentiment provides the raw material for communications strategies that are not just compelling, but credible and durable. In China, this means a public narrative grounded in an accurate reading of Beijing’s political priorities — one that will land with the audiences that matter, rather than triggering the responses it was designed to prevent. In any market, it means that communications strategies are built on an accurate picture of the regulatory and political landscape, not developed in isolation from it.
- Narrative Supporting Regulatory Relationships: A well-crafted, consistent public story about the company’s values, commitments, and contributions to the markets in which it operates actively supports GA/PA’s relationship-building work. Regulators and policymakers — in Beijing, Brussels, Washington, or Mexico City — pay attention to how companies represent themselves publicly. A coherent, credible narrative reinforces the credibility of private engagement and reduces the likelihood of adversarial action.
- Coordinated Crisis Response: Crises in today’s environment — whether triggered by a government action, a policy announcement, a geopolitical flashpoint, or a consumer campaign — move faster than siloed organizations can respond. A function that has already integrated its intelligence, relationships, and messaging frameworks is capable of responding in hours, not days. The cost of that speed differential, when it matters, is measured in market access, share price, and regulatory standing.
Four Actions for Senior Leaders
For executives overseeing these functions, the practical implications are clear:
- Organizational structure should reflect strategic reality. If GA/PA and comms report through separate chains with limited coordination mechanisms, the organization is structurally incapable of the integrated response that today’s environment demands. Both functions should have direct access to the ExCom, and their mandates should be explicitly linked, globally and with particularly urgency in markets where regulatory hospitality is a primary driver of opportunity and geopolitical risk its disruptor.
- Shared intelligence is a prerequisite for integrated action. Regular cadences for sharing regulatory intelligence, policy developments, stakeholder mapping, and reputational monitoring data should be formalized — not left to informal relationships between team individuals who may rotate out.
- Crisis preparedness must be jointly owned, globally-cognizant and market-specific. Generic crisis communication protocols are inadequate for today’s environment. Scenario planning and response frameworks must account for the specific political dynamics, media landscape, and regulatory actors in each key market — including the ways in which a crisis in one market can rapidly acquire reputational dimensions in others.
- Narrative strategy must be policy-aware from inception. A communications strategy developed without GA/PA input will be reactive by design. The policy environment is not a constraint to be accommodated after a narrative is built — it is an input into the narrative design process itself.
The Bottom Line
“That integrated capability is not a support function. It is a core strategic asset — and should be resourced, structured, and led accordingly.”
The era in which GA/PA and comms could operate as parallel, loosely coordinated functions is over. The operating environment is too volatile, the reputational stakes too high, and the speed of political and regulatory change too fast for siloed structures to remain viable — in any market.
Together, these functions represent a company’s primary instrument for maintaining the conditions that business performance depends on: regulatory hospitality, stakeholder trust, and reputational resilience. In markets like China — where those conditions are hardest to build, easiest to lose, and most consequential to commercial outcomes — the integration of GA/PA and comms is not an organizational preference. It is an operational requirement. And as political complexity spreads to markets that were once more predictable, the same logic is applying with increasing force across the global operating landscape.
That integrated capability is not a support function. It is a core strategic asset — and should be resourced, structured, and led accordingly.
How Ankura Can Help
Successfully navigating this integrated challenge requires more than strategic frameworks — it demands a partner who can operate at the intersection of political intelligence, regulatory engagement, and communications strategy. This is the Ankura China Advisors difference. We combine politically-aware strategic counsel with hands-on execution support to help MNCs build and operationalize the integrated GA/PA and comms capability that today’s environment demands. From stakeholder mapping and regulatory intelligence to narrative development and crisis preparedness, we provide the end-to-end advisory and execution support needed to maintain a positive operating landscape in China and manage the reputational complexities of operating across geopolitically divided markets. Where others simply advise on the challenges, we partner with you to solve them — ensuring your China operation remains a source of enduring commercial and strategic advantage.
To explore how these principles apply to your organization, request a briefing with Ankura China Advisors.
Sources
[1] 2025 Geostrategic Outlook: How Geopolitics is Driving Transformation, EY-Parthenon, https://www.ey.com/en_gl/insights/geostrategy/2025-geostrategic-outlook
[2] A pertinent case study is the severe reputational impact experienced by several Western MNCs during the Gaza conflict. Uncalibrated public statements triggered immediate, highly polarized backlashes from diverse global stakeholder ecosystems, directly affecting local operations and demonstrating the high cost of mismatched communication. See: Case Study: Using Data to Navigate Geopolitical Reputation Risk, The Conference Board, https://www.conference-board.org/publications/AP-2024-02-06-TCB-China-Center-Using-Data-to-Navigate-Reputation-Risk-2024-February
References
- 2025 Geostrategic Outlook: How Geopolitics is Driving Transformation, EY-Parthenon: https://www.ey.com/en_gl/insights/geostrategy/2025-geostrategic-outlook
- Heidrick & Struggles on Government Affairs Leadership: https://www.heidrick.com/en/insights/legal-risk-compliance–government-affairs/finding-leaders-who-can-effectively-manage-political-regulatory-risk
- The Role of Government Affairs in Strengthening Corporate Communications, Oxford Management Centre: https://oxford-management.com/articles/the-role-of-government-affairs-in-strengthening-corporate-communications
- Case Study: Using Data to Navigate Geopolitical Reputation Risk, The Conference Board, https://www.conference-board.org/publications/AP-2024-02-06-TCB-China-Center-Using-Data-to-Navigate-Reputation-Risk-2024-February
© Copyright 2026. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of Ankura Consulting Group, LLC, its management, its subsidiaries, its affiliates, or its other professionals. Ankura is not a law firm and cannot provide legal advice.
