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Very often, we designate terms such as “family”, “social class”, "teachers", "experts”, “democrats”, “Tibetans”, “Chinese”, “Americans” etc to delineate a social aggregate. It is because members in a group share some functional commonality, ascribed or achieved. They share some norms and beliefs which bind them together. They hence behave in a way as expected from a member in that particular group. If face is bounded by the three elements of status, role performance and moral conduct, then there is no reason why a group cannot have the right to a face basing on the status, role performance and moral conduct of its members in general.
Furthermore, if members in the family share the same properties, status, prestige, outlook, surname, moral codes and a face in an ascribed manner, then there is no reason why members in a nation, sharing the land, the physical features, the economic achievement, political rights and so on, cannot share a face as well. The picture seems that there can hardly be any argument against leaving open the limit to the size and scope of a social aggregate within which its members can share a face. Face, theoretically speaking, can be societal, racial, national, continental and if interaction opens up among planets, planetary.
While a global face may appear surreal, the hypothesis upon the presence of a nation's face may not. In fact, some scholars have found that an individual's sense of self may vary according to the prosperity or poverty of the nation to which the individual belongs (Volkan, 1985: 231). If an individual's face correlates with an image of self, as in Goffman's definition, then there is reason to believe in a relation between an individual's face with the fortunes of the nation in which he is embedded.
People may share a sense of self, rising and falling, insofar as their nation does so. People may share a face, prestigious or notorious, dignified or unscrupulous, if that is what their nation appears. Images of nations are nothing new in the social sciences. Many scholars have already studied them. What is awaited from scholars is the research on a nation's image with a focus on the concept of face.
Moreover, a nation's face does not seem to be an irrelevant topic of study and particularly regarding China. King and Myers have pointed out that the primary source of identity of people in the country has gradually shifted from family or village to nation. They have reported Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek as speaking of a nation's face and the