The identity of the Chinese nation is an important content in building a strong sense of theChinese nation community, and it also reflects the collective self of the Chinese people. This studyintends to explore the group reference effect brought by the identity of the Chinese nation by combiningwith associative memory. By using a 4 (reference type: Chinese nation, French nation, self, semanticprocessing) * 2 (recognition type: same pairing, recombinant pairing) within-subject design, the influenceof different reference types on associative memory performance was explored. The results showed that themain effect of reference type was significant, and the memory performance of self-reference, reference tothe Chinese nation, and semantic processing was significantly higher than that of reference to the externalgroup of the French nation. At the same time, there was no significant difference in memory performancebetween self-reference and reference to the Chinese nation, and the main effect of recognition type wasnot significant, and the interaction between the two was not significant. Conclusion: There are selfreferenceand group reference effects in associative memory, and reference to the Chinese nation cancause a memory advantage that is not lower than self-reference, showing the stability and importance ofthe identity of the Chinese nation.