The narrative arc of nation branding: staging Shanghai World Expo 2010 in historical events

Lou, Jackie Jia (2020) The narrative arc of nation branding: staging Shanghai World Expo 2010 in historical events. In: Irene, T. and Tovar, J. (eds.) Research Companion to Language and Country Branding. London, UK: Routledge. ISBN 9780367343590.

Abstract

Research on Chinese nation branding (e.g. Barr 2012; Bodet and Lacassagne 2012; Loo and Davies 2006) has noted its Janus-faced nature: outward towards the world, and inward towards a domestic audience of heterogenous ethnic and cultural backgrounds. To examine how this dualistic outlook is discursively achieved in historical narratives, this study analyses a collection of stories of China’s participation in the World Expos from 1851 to 2008 (Yu et al., 2009), published in anticipation of the Shanghai World Expo 2010. By examining the overall narrative arc as well as metonymic usage of country names, this chapter shows how these narratives smooth over significant gaps in history when the country was closed off to the world and reinvent a progressive trajectory, in which China’s contact with the outside world has steadily increased under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This progressive historical trajectory, in turn, provides a narrative profluence (Scollon 2010) to launch the upcoming global event. Combined with strategic use of metonyms, this selective retelling of China's relationship with the world then serves to reconstruct a unified national consciousness to the domestic audience and the party's legitimacy as agent of progress on the world stage.

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