How China’s Spring Festival Gala Turns Cultural Recognition into National Belonging

China’s CCTV Spring Festival Gala (Chunwan) operates as an annual media ritual that fosters national belonging through affective mediation. Integrating hermeneutic interpretation, media ritual theory, orientalist critique, and Chinese relational philosophy, this study examines how cultural identity is activated and consolidated into national attachment. Using qualitative analysis of broadcast performances, symbolic staging features, narrative structures, celebrity presence, curated cultural diversity, interviews with 20 viewers, and post-broadcast platform circulation, the study identifies a sequential mediation process. Recognition-based cultural cues generate pre-reflective affect and familiarity. Technological spectacle intensifies emotional engagement, while narrative sketches sustain ethical continuity through relational themes. Celebrity visibility strengthens attachment, and curated diversity aestheticizes plurality into symbolic harmony, revealing internal orientalism. Patriotic finales resonate after cumulative affect across the program, while digital circulation extends ritual participation. The findings propose a mediation model positioning cultural identity as the key link between audiovisual representation and lived national belonging.