Education is an emotional undertaking. Teachers’digital competencies inherently imply emotional components, which run through their practices under multiple identities as natural persons, educators and members of society. From the perspective of the Multiple Streams Framework, the practical motivations for integrating emotional labor into the training of teachers’ digital competencies lie in three realities: the prevailing emotional predicament of teachers, the top-down impetus of national digital development blueprints, and the constant evaluative pressure teachers endure. China may advance the following measures in the future: first, encourage theoretical research to foster positive emotional awareness among teachers; second, optimize policy formulation to establish emotional norms aligned with the digital transformation of education; third, center on teachers’ professional development to cultivate their emotional intelligence embedded within digital competencies; fourth, improve supporting resources to build a positive emotional ecosystem for teachers to apply their digital capabilities.