A Perfect Match? Connecting City and National Image across Scales in Tianjin’s Promotional Communication
City branding and national-image projection are usually studied at separate representational scales. When the city, not the nation, is the immediate object of communication, their relationship remains poorly understood. This study addresses that gap through a qualitative multimodal analysis of A Perfect Match, an official promotional video released ahead of the 2025 Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in Tianjin. Tianjin’s city image is first identified on its own terms through shot- and sequence-level social-semiotic analysis, while a separate reference framework of China’s projected national image is built from authoritative official discourse published between 2011 and 2023. The two structures are then compared, after which the multimodal evidence is revisited to trace the representational processes underlying the relationships identified. The analysis constructs Tianjin through four interrelated dimensions: Living Cultural Heritage, Dynamic Metropolis, Innovative City, and Internationally Engaged City. These dimensions correspond selectively with projected national-image narratives concerning civilizational continuity and renewal, modernization and progress, openness and cooperation, and international contribution. Such relationships are selective, asymmetrical, and layered rather than one-to-one. Broader national-image meanings connect to city representation through multimodal realization and place-specific grounding, often taking observable form in represented urban processes and activities. Their selective organization at the city scale yields what the study terms cross-scalar reconfiguration. A city can thus remain the immediate object of representation while serving as a subnational site through which broader national-image meanings are articulated, a finding that contributes a multi-scalar perspective to research on city image and projected national image in international communication.
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