In the current complex and ever-changing international environment, intertwined with diverse cultural currents, strengthening national identity has become an urgent need to enhance national cohesion and safeguard national sovereignty. The red archives exhibition is an important platform for discourse dissemination and value propaganda, using red historical material to strengthen national identity from three value dimensions: history, culture and politics. The mechanism of its role is to transfer knowledge and trigger emotional response to arouse collective memory through exhibition content, to mobilize emotional experience to strengthen identity cognition via the exhibition environment, and to deepen emotional trust by enhancing emotional energy through the interaction of the exhibition. The purpose of strengthening national identity can be achieved under the synergy of memory awakening, identity cognition, and trust reinforcement. Thus, the red archives exhibition can be further designed in three directions: creating high-quality archives exhibition content to enhance the sense of belonging of the visitors; creating a contextualized archives exhibition space to build up the cohesion of red culture; and upgrading the level of interaction between internal and external subjects to deepen the emotional connection between the state and its people.