Abstract
National blockbusters, such as My People, My Country (MPMC; 我和我的祖国, wo he wode zuguo), have gained a prominent position in contemporary Chinese nationalist propaganda. Based on a multi-modal discourse analysis approach, this paper will examine how narratives of “my country” and “my people” are affectively constructed through multi-modal resources in the MPMC to shape a unified Chinese national identity while consolidating the Chinese Communist Party’s ruling legitimacy in the face of increasingly diverse challenges. Findings show three discursive strategies, involving inter related affects: (1) selective and pride-based mythmaking of the glorious past; (2) con veying happiness through appropriation of (sub)popular culture; and (3) mobilising nostalgia by invoking cultural memories. To grasp possible effects of these affective strat egies, we circulated questionnaires to twenty-five Chinese diasporas. Their answers sug gest that, although these strategies evoke nationalist emotions, questions are also raised concerning conflicting interests between the collective and the individual, as well as the potential risks of affective nationalism. Manuscript received 27 June 2023; accepted 1 March 2024 Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, repro duction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). Research Article Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 1–21 © The Author(s) 2024 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/18681026241239976 journals.sagepub.com/home/cca Keywords Nationalism, emotional mobilisation, Chinese main melody films, multi-modal discourse analysis
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