Framing the Crisis: The Chinese Mainland’s Guidance of Popular Nationalism in the Context of Nancy Pelosi’s Visit to Taiwan

This study examined whether the Chinese government could guide nationalism to its benefit in a sovereignty-related incident. To answer this question, it used the case study of the visit to Taiwan in 2022 by the former Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and an innovative framework that combines framing theory and social identity theory, alongside indicators to measure the extent to which the government achieves its goals in guiding nationalism. Based on more than 6,000 comments on the visit, the research finds that the Chinese mainland maintained a certain degree of control over nationalism even in a high-stakes case such as the Pelosi visit. However, the article also highlights the limitations to the government’s guidance of nationalism. Moving beyond the binary conclusions of the existing literature, the study offers a more nuanced account by identifying factors influencing public acceptance of official narratives and by proposing concrete measures for assessing the effectiveness of attempts to guide state-led nationalism.