Search

Digital transformation and sustainability are both at the forefront of current supply chain developments. However, the specific mechanisms of how digital transformation and green supply chain development interact still need to be clarified, which can help supply chain business operators to enhance supply chain sustainability more effectively. This paper focuses on how the companies' organization structure and the socio-economic environment interact with digital technologies under the process of green supply chain development. Based on the "Technology–Organization–Environment" (TOE) framework, this paper analyze how digital transformation can drive green supply chain development. To test the TOE theoretical analysis framework, this paper calculates the digital transformation and green supply chain development index at the provincial level in China and conducts an empirical study. The main findings and implications of this paper can be summarized in the following aspects: First, according to the TOE theory, the external environment dimensions, such as the market and policy environments, affect the role of digital technology in promoting GSC development. Second, in the organizational dimensions, labor–capital relations, company size, and ownership factors can all affect the contribution of digital transformation to green supply chains. Third, there are differences in the impact of different types of digitization technologies on GSC development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Territorial spatial planning involves fixability and flexibility in different driving factors related to control and development orientation, and they play an important role in regional sustainable development, especially in developing countries such as China. With rapid urbanisation and industrialisation, China has been impacted by conflicts between development and protection in territorial space. To integrate the contradictions among different territorial spatial planning measures, planners and scholars have started to focus on studies regarding fixability–flexibility relationships and integration. However, the relationship between and integration of fixability and flexibility in territorial spatial planning have yet to be clearly summarised. This paper explores an innovative research direction for the fixability–flexibility relations in territorial spatial planning from a new perspective, the Food–Energy–Water Nexus, which is a dynamic and comprehensive framework for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) studies. This paper covers the existing research on fixability and flexibility in territorial spatial planning. Moreover, after summarising the conflicts of fixability and flexibility, the dialectical relationship between and the integration of fixability and flexibility are researched. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of carbon neutrality does have economic costs; however, few studies have measured the cost and the economic neutral opportunities. This paper uses a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to simulate China's carbon neutrality path from 2020 to 2060 and analyzes its economic impact. This paper innovatively adjusts the CGE modeling technology and simulates the boundary of the Porter hypothesis on the premise of economic neutrality. The results show that the carbon neutrality target may reduce the annual GDP growth rate by about 0.8% in 2020–2060. To make the carbon pricing method under the carbon neutrality framework meet the strong version of the Porter hypothesis (or economic neutrality), China must increase its annual total factor productivity by 0.56–0.57% in 2020–2060; this is hard to achieve. In addition, the study finds that China's 2030 carbon target has little impact on the economy, but the achievement of the 2060 carbon neutrality target will have a significant effect. Therefore, the paper believes that the key to carbon neutrality lies in the coexistence of technological innovation and carbon pricing to ensure that we can cope with global warming with the lowest cost and resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the occurrence of the global financial crisis in 2008, the U.S. unconventional monetary policy affected the Chinese market. Based on a monthly data sample from 2008M1 to 2015M12, in this paper we identify U.S. and Chinese monetary policy shocks by using a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model with multi-external instrumental variables along with principal component analysis (PCA) combined with high-frequency financial market data. The empirical results show that the unconventional monetary policies had a negative effect on China's inflation and output due to the signal effect, and China's stock and commodity markets increased in the short term. During the same period, China's monetary policy had a greater impact on the domestic economy and financial markets. The conclusion of this paper provides a significant reference for relevant departments to make decisions amidst the new wave of unconventional U.S. monetary policies due to the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through extensive data research and analysis, this paper comprehensively summarizes the status and key insights of global carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) development. It aims to gain a comprehensive understanding of the relevant policies, technologies, and security measures adopted by major countries in their CCS development processes. Furthermore, it explores the existing status and limitations of China's offshore development efforts, while providing valuable recommendations for enhancing China's offshore CCS initiatives, as well as serving as a reference for other nations worldwide. Offshore CCS plays a crucial role for China to achieve the development target of carbon peak and carbon neutrality, due to its energy structure and industrial distribution. While China possesses significant offshore CCS potential, achieving commercialization still requires substantial efforts. To facilitate the process and draw insights from successful experiences in other countries, this paper illustrates the characteristics and generalizes the experience of offshore CCS industry practices in America, Europe and Japan, respectively. Furthermore, it is recommended that a new round of investigation into offshore CCS potential be conducted, while promoting integrated collaboration between geological surveying and marine scientific research. Additionally, further research on industrial policies and green financial strategies should be undertaken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Park green space is a big part of public infrastructure in cities, and how to evaluate and optimize the mismatch of urban park green space (UPGS) has become the focus of current research in academia and industry. Taking China's 286 cities as an example, this paper used the spatial cluster and Boston Consulting Group Matrix to analyze the aggregation laws and changing modes of UPGS from 2010 to 2020, introduced the spatial mismatch model to analyze the matching of its supply and demand with GDP and population, and adopted the Geodetector to analyze the influencing factors. The findings: (1) The evolution of UPGS in China had long been characterized by a "pyramidal" pattern, i.e., limited green cities > developing green cities > steady green cities > booming green cities, exhibiting the spatial characteristics of gradient differences between the coasts and inland areas, and the aggregation of blocks in some areas. (2) The supply and demand mismatches of the UPGS were relatively stable, with negative matching being the main supply mismatch type, and positive matching being the main demand mismatch type. The contribution of supply and demand mismatches similarly showed a spatial pattern of a gradual decrease from the coast to inland and the aggregation of blocks in some areas. (3) Five types of factors played different driving roles on UPGS, with social development remaining a weak factor, and the strong factor switching from urban infrastructure to construction land scale. The interaction detection was dominated by a bilinear enhancement, with super-interaction factors changing from an output value of the tertiary industry and population urbanization rate to education expenditure in local general public budgets. (4) Based on the mismatch between the supply and demand for UPGS in China, 286 cities were classified into four types, namely a smart shrinking zone, smart growing zone, status quo zone, and overlay policy zone, and differentiated development proposals for the corresponding zoning were put forward. This paper constructed an application framework of "evolution pattern + supply demand match + driving factors + policy zoning" for UPGS at a large scale, which will effectively enhance the effective allocation of its resources across the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given their exceptional performance, plastic packaging products are widely used in daily life, and the dramatic expansion in plastic packaging waste (PPW) has exacerbated environmental problems. Many countries have enacted laws and developed recycling technologies to manage plastic packaging waste in consideration of the nature of PPW as both garbage and a resource. As the world's largest producer and consumer of plastics, China has also taken measures to address this issue. This paper presents the latest management regulations and recycling strategies for PPW in China. Based on an analysis of the current management status of PPW and recycling technologies and their carbon emission impacts, some management suggestions and a comprehensive full-chain recycling process were put forward. We supposed that management challenges that need to be overcome in the future can be solved through the improvement of green designs for plastic packaging, manufacturing technology updates, consumption concept changes, and the high-value utilization of PPW. This paper aims to provide valuable references for government decisions on PPW management and, furthermore, to set up an economically sensible and industrially feasible PPW solution and boost the development of PPW recycling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increase in global temperature, the global change situation dominated by climate warming is becoming more and more serious. Climate change will cause differences in the suitable areas of species in different periods. Ginkgo biloba L., a rare and endangered wild plant protected at the national level in China, is the oldest relict plant in the world. Because of severe climate change, only China's wild Ginkgo biloba has been preserved, yet China's wild Ginkgo biloba population is facing extinction risk. Ginkgo biloba has rich ornamental value, application value, economic value, medicinal value and ecological value. Not only can it produce economic and ecological benefits, but it can also produce huge social benefits. Based on the data of Ginkgo biloba sample distribution, bioclimatic variables and soil variables, this paper uses the MaxEnt model to simulate Ginkgo biloba suitable area under current and future different climate scenarios, and analyzes the changes in the potential suitable area of Ginkgo biloba in the future through ArcGIS 10.6. The results are as follows: (1) the results simulated by the MaxEnt model are AUC > 0.9, showing that the simulation results have a high accuracy; (2) the min temperature of the coldest month, precipitation of the wettest month, elevation, and temperature seasonality are the main environmental variables affecting the change in the Ginkgo biloba suitable area; (3) under future climate scenarios, the suitable area of Ginkgo biloba is predicted to expand in the future, covering most of the south and some northeast regions, and moderate temperature and precipitation changes under climate change are conducive for the growth of Ginkgo biloba; and (4) in the future, the distribution center of the suitable area will move to the northeast. According to the conclusions in this paper, it is expected to provide theoretical reference for cultivation and management, sustainable utilization and solution of ecological environment problems of Ginkgo biloba. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of the Internet and digital technology, digital infrastructure has become an important part of urban infrastructure. Many cities are enacting smart policies to promote the development of digital technology infrastructure. However, what are their mechanisms? There is currently a shortage of literature on the subject. This paper tried to solve this problem and used China as an example. Using panel data from cities in China, this paper used the spatial multiple-period difference-in-difference (SDID) method to investigate the impact of smart city policy (SCP) on digital infrastructure. First, we found that SCP significantly promotes the construction of digital infrastructure, with strong positive spatial spillover effects. This result remained valid after a series of rigorous robustness tests. Second, we discovered that the indirect effects of policy implementation outweigh the direct effects. Furthermore, smart city development enhances local government investment in digital infrastructure, attracts more high-tech enterprises, and consequently drives improvements in urban digital infrastructure levels. Lastly, we observed that the effectiveness of smart city policies is stronger in cities with good fiscal conditions, strong economic development, and a thriving digital economy. This research will not only enrich research on smart cities but also provide policy recommendations for strengthening digital infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been fruitful publications on thermal comfort of urban residential buildings in China. However, there is a lack of reviews on this topic to perform a comprehensive analysis and find opportunities to meet occupants' thermal comfort needs while improving building energy efficiencies. This paper addresses this issue by presenting a systematic review on the advancements in research on thermal comfort in urban residential buildings in China. Firstly, two common thermal comfort research approaches, i.e., field studies and laboratory studies, are discussed. Secondly, eleven main thermal comfort evaluation indicators are summarized. Finally, this paper analyzes the thermal comfort survey data from different researchers, discusses the impacts of adaptive behaviors on human thermal comfort, and provides recommendations for future research on urban residential thermal comfort. It was found that people have higher and higher requirements for their indoor thermal environment as time goes by, especially in the winter; the thermoneutral temperature is higher in warmer climate regions in the summer but lower in the winter than in colder climate regions; the thermoneutral temperature tends to increase with the indoor air temperature due to an adaptation to the indoor thermal environment. The outcomes of this paper provide valuable information on thermal comfort behaviors of urban residents in different climate zones in China, which can serve as a resource for the academic community conducting future research on thermal comfort and assist policymakers in enhancing building energy efficiencies without compromising the occupants' comfort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientifically measuring the level of environmental governance (EGL) and understanding its spatial convergence has important reference value for ecological governance. In this paper, the global entropy method is applied to measure the EGL of 284 prefecture-level cities in China from 2007 to 2019, which are divided into three major river basins, including the Yellow River, Yangtze River, and Pearl River, to observe the spatial–temporal evolutionary characterization through a standard deviation ellipse model. The coefficient of variation and the spatial econometric model are the tools used to conduct the spatial convergence test. The results are as follows: (1) China's EGL is low overall, though it is fluctuating upward at low magnitude, and the three major river basins follow the ranking: The Pearl River Basin > The Yangtze River Basin > The Yellow River Basin. (2) Spatially, the distribution pattern of China's EGL changes from "scattered and sporadic" to "multipolar core". (3) The center of China's environmental governance was concentrated in the east from 2007 to 2019, and the EGL in the midstream and downstream regions of the three major river basins increased rapidly. (4) Environmental governance in China has significant absolute and conditional β-convergence characteristics, as do the three major basins, while the ranking of convergence speed remains "Yangtze River Basin > Yellow River Basin > Pearl River Basin". Of these, economic development accelerated the convergence rate of environmental governance in China and its three major river basins; financial pressure significantly inhibited the convergence of the EGL of the Yellow River Basin. The improvement of the EGL in the Pearl River Basin was also negatively influenced by the industrial structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New-energy vehicles (NEV), particularly electric vehicles, are globally popular with political and financial support from governments, which aim at reducing energy consumption and environmental pollution in the transportation sector. This paper designs a matrix model which identifies the factors influencing the decision-making process on purchasing NEVs, and applies the model on a Chinese case to investigate the impact of influencing factors on Chinese consumers' purchase behavior to NEVs. The influencing factors are divided into five groups: economic, political, social, technological and environmental. Through a detailed questionnaire survey of 526 consumers in China, this paper conducts a correlation and difference analysis between these consumers' status and the influencing factors on the purchase decision-making of NEVs through SPSS software. The results indicate that economic, technological and political factors have a strong influence on purchase behavior, while social and environmental factors have a weaker influence. Additional principal component analysis on influencing factors' preference reveals that consumers' preferences have two tendencies: practicability or appearance, with the former is attracting far more attention. Rather than practicability or appearance, consumers care more about economic and political factors. According to these results, this paper suggests several policy implications on enhancing the consumers' willingness to purchase NEVs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of globalization and the intensification of international competition, the construction of public cultural facilities has long been not limited to meeting the cultural needs of the people but has become an important initiative to shape the competitiveness of cities. This paper collected POI and socio-economic statistics from 2012 to 2020 from 285 Chinese cities and employed the coefficient of variation (CV), Gini index (GI), ESDA, and GeoDetector to analyze the spatial patterns and driving mechanisms of public cultural facilities. Findings: (1) Public cultural facilities in Chinese cities were featured by evident regional gradient differences and uneven spatial distributions, with a CV greater than 1.3 and a GI greater than 0.5 in both years. They also showed signs of aggregation at weak levels, with a Moran I of 0.15 in both years and a cluster pattern of "hot in the east and cold in the west". (2) Different types of public cultural facilities had differences in their differentiation, aggregation, and change trends. The CV changed from 1.39~2.69 to 1.06~1.92, and the GI changed from 0.53~0.80 to 0.47~0.62, with the differentiation of libraries, museums, theaters, art galleries, and cultural centers decreasing gradually, while that of exhibition halls increased day by day. As the Moran I increased from 0.08~0.20 to 0.12~0.24, libraries, museums, art galleries, and cultural centers showed weak aggregation with an increasingly strong trend. Theaters and exhibition halls also showed weak aggregation but in a declining trend, with the Moran I changing from 0.15~1.19 to 0.09~0.1. (3) The five driving variables exhibit significant differences in their strength across time and across regions, with the economic and infrastructure factors being the strongest and the urbanization factor the weakest. There are significant differences in the strength of the driving forces among the factors, with the total retail sales of consumers, the number of subscribers to internet services, regular higher education institutions, and undergraduates in regular HEIs playing both direct and interactive roles as the core factors. (4) The 285 cities in China are divided into four policy zonings of star, cow, question, and dog cities. Star cities should maintain their status quo without involving too much policy intervention, whereas the core and important factors should be the focus of policy in dog cities and cow cities, and the auxiliary factors should be the focus of policy in question cities. This paper contributes to the in-depth knowledge of the development pattern of public cultural facilities and provides a more refined basis for the formulation of public cultural facility promotion policies in China and similar countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coupling coordination of agricultural technology innovation with food security is of great significance for high-quality agricultural development. By identifying the coupling coordination relationship between the two systems and the influencing factors, this paper aims to promote the virtuous cycle of coordinated development between regional agriculture and technology, as well as accelerate the realisation of high-quality development of Chinese agriculture. Therefore, this paper explores the spatial and temporal coupling characteristics of the two using the entropy value method, coupling coordination degree model, and exploratory spatial data analysis, and it screens for important influencing factors using the grey correlation model. The main results show that ① the coupling coordination relationship between agricultural technology innovation and food security in China is at a dissonant stage, but the value of the coupling coordination degree increases from 0.2076 to 0.3437 during the period of study, and the level of coordination gradually improves. ② The degree of coupling coordination in the provincial space exhibits a distribution pattern of "high in the east and low in the west". The areas of high value are primarily situated in the provinces of Shandong, Jiangsu, and other provinces along the southeastern coast of China, while the areas of low value are mainly located in the provinces of Qinghai, Ningxia, and other provinces in inland northwest China. ③ The Moran's index of provincial coupling coordination is greater than 0, showing a certain positive correlation, and there is a significant pattern of spatial aggregation. ④ The correlation coefficients between the influencing factors and the degree of coupling coordination are all greater than 0.35, indicating a moderate or high correlation, but the significance of technological support capacity and food distribution security increased over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban park green areas are part of territorial space planning, shouldering the mission of providing residents with high-quality ecological products and public space. Using a combination of several measurement models such as the BCG (Boston Consulting Group) matrix, ESDA (Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis), MLR (Machine Learning Regression), GWR (Geographically Weighted Regression), and GeoDetector, this paper presents an empirical study on the changes in Urban Park Green Areas (UPGAs) in the Grand Canal of China. By quantitatively measuring the spatio–temporal evolution patterns of UPGAs, this study reveals the driving mechanisms behind them and proposes policy recommendations for planning and management based on performance evaluation. The spatio–temporal evolution of UPGAs and their performance in China's Grand Canal are characterized by significant spatial heterogeneity and correlation, with diversified development patterns such as HH (High-scale–High-growth), HL (High-scale–Low-growth), LH (Low-scale–High-growth), and LL (Low-scale–Low-growth) emerging. The evolution performance is dominated by positive oversupply and positive equilibrium, where undersupply coexists with oversupply. Therefore, this paper recommends the implementation of a zoning strategy in the future spatial planning of ecological green areas, urban parks, and green infrastructure. It is also recommended to design differentiated construction strategies and management policies for each zoning area, while promoting inter-city mutual cooperation in the joint preparation and implementation of integrated symbiosis planning. Furthermore, the spatio–temporal evolution of the UPGAs in the Grand Canal of China is influenced by many factors with very complex dynamic mechanisms, and there are significant differences in the nature, intensity, spatial effects, and interaction effects between different factors. Therefore, in the future management of ecological green areas, urban parks, and green infrastructure, it is necessary to interconnect policies to enhance their synergies in population, aging, industry and economy, and ecological civilization to maximize the policy performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the esports industry experiences unprecedented growth, efforts to legitimize it as a recognized sport have intensified. This paper explores the transformative changes in China's esports landscape with focus on the aftermath of its official recognition at the 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou. For this, this study employs a data-driven comparative approach to analyze both online news data and viewer comments on a video platform broadcasting the esports tournament during the Hangzhou Asian Games. For text data, it utilized text mining techniques of the Latent Dirichlet Allocation algorithm (LDA), and for conversion from image to text, it used through the Contrastive Language–Image Pretraining (CLIP) model. The findings reveal that the text and image data in online news emphasize the industry's positive anticipation of esports becoming a medal sport, but the public who watched esports events showed mixed expectations, doubts, or even negative sentiments about the reevaluation of esports. As evidenced in the paper, the public's divided stance towards esports might hinder the establishment of a solid consensus in developing the necessary infrastructure or policymaking. Thus, the transition for games to be recognized as an Olympic sport after their inclusion in the Asian Games demands a prolonged period and a comprehensive blend of economic, social, cultural, and educational policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the deepening of urbanization in China, the coordinated development of cities in different regions is an important part of the sustainable development of the country, and the reasonable quantification of the unbalanced development of cities in different regions is an important issue facing the society nowadays. Previous studies usually use population data to analyze the power-law distribution law to quantify the imbalance of urban development in different regions, but China's population data span a large number of years and numerous division criteria, and the results obtained from different population data are widely disparate and have obvious limitations. The paper starts from a fractal perspective and utilizes OpenStreetMap (OSM) data to extract national road intersections from 2015 to 2022, calculates critical distance thresholds for eight years using urban expansion curves, generates urban agglomerations in China, and quantifies the imbalance of urban development in different regions by calculating the urban agglomeration power-law index. The results indicate that (1) the critical distance threshold of urban expansion curves exhibits a slight overall increase and stabilizes within the range of 120–130 m, (2) the number of urban agglomerations in China has been increasing significantly year by year, but the power-law index has been decreasing from 1.49 in 2015 to 1.36 in 2022, and (3) the number of urban agglomerations and the power–law index of the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, and Chengdu–Chongqing regions, which is consistent with the national scale trend, indicates that the scale distribution of urban agglomerations in China at this stage does not conform to Zipf's law, and there is a certain Matthew effect among cities in different geographic areas with a large unevenness. The results of the study can provide new ideas for assessing the coordinated development of cities in different regions. It compensates for the instability of population and economic data in traditional studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 20 July 2021, an extreme rainstorm battered Zhengzhou in China's Henan Province, killing 302 people, including 14 individuals who drowned in a subway tunnel and 6 who drowned in a road tunnel. As the global climate warms, extreme weather events similar to the Zhengzhou flood will become more frequent, with increasingly catastrophic consequences for society. Taking a case study-based approach by focusing on the record-breaking Zhengzhou flood, this paper examines the governance capacity of inland cities in North China for managing extreme precipitation and flooding events from the perspective of the flood risk management process. Based on in-depth case analysis, our paper hypothesizes that inland cities in North China still have low risk perceptions of extreme weather events, which was manifested in insufficient pre-disaster preparation and prevention, poor risk communication, and slow emergency response. Accordingly, it is recommended that inland cities update their risk perceptions of extreme rainfall and flooding events, which are no longer low-probability, high-impact "black swans", but turning into high-probability, high-impact "gray rhinos." In particular, cities must make sufficient preparation for extreme weather events by revising contingency plans and strengthening their implementation, improving risk communication of meteorological warnings, and synchronizing emergency response with meteorological warnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aquatic products have made an increasingly important contribution to ensuring food security and nutrition. The huge and dynamic aquatic product consumption market in China has created a new consumption pattern, and the transformation and upgrading of the aquatic industry is essential. Using system generalized method of moments (GMM) and fishery industry data from 2003 to 2019 in 31 provinces and regions, this paper constructs the upgrading index of fishery industrial structure and finds that: (1) In general, the upgrading level of China's fishery industrial structure is on the rise, but it is still in its infancy. (2) The upgrading level of the fishery industrial structure in coastal areas is greater than that of inland areas. (3) The level of economic development and the labor productivity of primary fishery industry are the key influencing factors of China's fishery industrial upgrading. (4) By comparing the heterogeneity of the impact of various factors on the upgrading of fishery industrial structure in coastal and inland areas, the impact is mainly in coastal areas. To promote the upgrading of China's fishery industrial structure, this paper puts forward some suggestions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Islam is widely spread throughout every corner of China, with the Hui people, the largest Muslim ethnic group in China, numbering over 10 million people, serving as its main carrier. Their culture types and local features exhibit great diversity across different provinces. The ceremony of Prophet's Day or Mawlid al-Nabi in China, as one of the three fundamental festivals of the Hui people alongside Eid al-Fitur and Eid al-Qurban, appears to be more comprehensive, open, and localized. Drawing from fieldwork in three Hui communities—Xi'an in Shaanxi province, Najiaying in Yunnan province, and Hezhou in Gansu province—this paper approaches the topic from the perspective of inculturation and cultural innovation. It aims to describe the ritual processes observed in these three different Hui communities and discuss how the Hui people integrate Islam with traditional Chinese culture in their local contexts, with the intention of forming and preserving their own cultural characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interethnic marriage amongst China's ethnic population has not received the attention it deserves. This is partly due to the hesitation and resistance of the more prominent ethnic groups—Tibetans and Uyghurs—to enter an interethnic marriage. Still, it is less so for China's Mongols, who now have an interethnic marriage rate of almost 90 percent. The intermarriage pattern had previously involved urbanities, but over the last twenty years, it has included those living in townships and villages, suggesting that the integration of Mongols within the People's Republic's mainstream society was gradual and arose from shared cultural beliefs and practices among Mongols and Han Chinese. It further indicates that marital issues will be like those in non-ethnic marriages. The paper explores prevailing attitudes toward interethnic marriages of the 1980s and the 2000s. The analysis highlights commonalities and shifts in marital expectations initially grounded in ethnic reaffirmation that is motived more out of personal commonality, commitment, and affection, suggesting that the offspring from these unions have hybridized or mixed ethnic identities, whereby urban Mongols entertain two identities—one ethnic and the other national. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban regeneration is a sound, sustainable urban development strategy globally. In China, promoting urban regeneration has become the national sustainable urban strategy. Under the resource constraint, it is necessary to understand what benefits different types of urban regeneration projects can contribute to urban development. Much research has contributed to evaluating the benefits of urban regeneration on the project scale. The systematic investigation of their effects on surrounding economic vitality, especially the comparison between different types of projects, is relatively downplayed. This paper aims to evaluate and compare the effects of urban regeneration projects on surrounding economic vitality by calculating the change in housing prices. Chongqing is selected as the case city. Based on the housing transaction data from 2015 to 2021, a staggered difference-in-difference method is employed to capture the results. The finding shows that the overall effects are significantly negative, especially within a 400–800 m radius. Higher investment or better project location relates to stronger negative effects. Moreover, the differences in effects among the three types of urban regeneration projects are clearly revealed from diverse perspectives. It provides a valuable reference for policymakers and urban planners to make urban regeneration planning better by considering comprehensive benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When studying the coupling coordination relationship between agricultural eco-efficiency and urbanization, it is crucial to consider food security, especially in a populous country like China. This paper focuses on 31 provinces in China as the research units, covering the time period from 2000 to 2020. Based on the concept of agricultural eco-efficiency, an evaluation index system was developed to include undesirable outputs (carbon emissions), and agricultural eco-efficiency scores were calculated using the SBM–DEA model. An urbanization evaluation index system, covering six dimensions and twelve indexes, was constructed. A comprehensive index of urbanization is measured using the entropy method. On this basis, a coupling coordination model was applied to quantify the relationship between agricultural eco-efficiency and urbanization at the provincial scale in China. The results showed that the agricultural eco-efficiency of all provincial units in China exhibited an overall trend of improvement. Average efficiency followed a spatial pattern of majority grain-consuming areas > grain production–consumption balance areas > majority grain-producing areas. The level of coupling between agricultural eco-efficiency and urbanization is generally low. Currently, no regions have reached the stage of synergy or high-level coupling. Most regions are currently in an antagonistic stage with a coupling degree of 0.3 < C ≤ 0.5. The classification of coupling coordination levels changed from four levels of "severe imbalance", "moderate imbalance", "mild imbalance", and "primary coordination" to "moderate imbalance", "mild imbalance", "primary coordination", and "intermediate coordination". The level of "severe imbalance" disappeared, the level of "intermediate coordination" appeared, and the level of "mild imbalance" became the largest scale level. From the perspective of food security, the proportion of grain production in the categories of "primary coordination" and "intermediate coordination" was less than 10%, and these provinces never achieved self-sufficiency in food production. The proportion of grain production at the "mild imbalance" level reached 62.4%, while the per capita grain production at the "moderate imbalance" level reached 846.7 kg. Provinces with lower levels of coupling coordination have stronger food security capabilities. It can be observed that the weaker the coupling coordination between agricultural eco-efficiency and urbanization, the higher the food self-sufficiency. Based on the research results above, we discussed strategies to enhance agricultural eco-efficiency in majority grain-producing regions by focusing on technological progress and technical efficiency. Additionally, we analyzed approaches to achieve grain self-sufficiency in regions characterized by a high level of coordination between agricultural eco-efficiency and urbanization, considering both production and trade dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The general requirements of China's rural revitalization strategy are industrial prosperity, ecological livability and rich life. However, the traditional livestock breeding model has struggled to balance the dual requirements of production development and ecological protection, and it is urgent to inject new impetus and explore new development paths. At present, e-commerce has become a bridge between pastoral areas and cities, herdsmen and consumers. E-commerce participation is not only an important starting point for herdsmen to increase the added value and profit space of livestock products, but also an effective way to change the original breeding behavior based on the premise of destroying grassland. Therefore, this paper presents an in-depth study on the issue of e-commerce enabling grassland ecological restoration, aiming to provide more scientific and effective guidance for e-commerce to be used to achieve a win–win situation in economy and ecology. Therefore, based on the data of 271 herdsmen in pastoral areas of Inner Mongolia, we used the OLS model and the two-stage least squares (2SLS) method to identify the direct impact of herdsmen's e-commerce participation on grassland utilization pressure. The empirical results show that e-commerce participation can significantly decrease the grassland utilization pressure. The conclusion was still valid after alleviating endogeneity and conducting a robustness test. The results of a mechanism analysis suggest that the reduction effect of e-commerce participation on grassland utilization pressure is mainly due to price incentive, reputation incentive and place identity. Subjective norms can strengthen the inhibitory effect of e-commerce participation on grassland utilization pressure. Furthermore, a heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that e-commerce participation has a better, decreased impact on the grassland utilization pressure on the banners of China's rural e-commerce demonstration county program. Under a counterfactual assumption, if herdsmen who can participate in e-commerce choose not to do this, their grassland utilization pressure will increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A well-designed institutional arrangement for urban village redevelopment projects (UVRPs) must consider transaction costs, but academic papers discussing it from the perspective of transaction cost economics are lacking. This paper applies theory of transaction cost economics to analyse the types and sizes of transaction costs and who bears these costs during redevelopment when implementing UVRPs in China. This paper finds that transactions in UVRPs have high asset specificity, high uncertainty and low frequency, which easily results in high levels of transaction costs. Based on 439 UVRPs collected from seven cities, this paper finds that UVRPs implemented with top–down institutional arrangements remain prevalent in China. Based on semi-structured interviews with participating parties, this paper proves that the sizes and types of transaction costs and the distribution of these costs borne by different participating parties vary with the change of stage under dissimilar institutional arrangements. This implies that a high level of transaction costs at one stage does not necessarily mean the costs stay high at another stage. Transaction costs have essential implications for process efficiency, so policymakers need to consider transaction costs and use hybrid institutional arrangements to enhance the efficiency and sustainability of policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology includes hard technology and soft technology. Material technology embodied in production conditions and working conditions such as machinery, equipment and infrastructure is called hard technology, referring to the technology directly used in the development and production of means of production and means of subsistence, such as product design technology, equipment manufacturing technology, etc. Non-material technology, which embodies the experience, skills and management ability of process management, decision support and information technology, is called soft technology. Hard technologies make things easier and faster, while soft technologies promote flexibility and creativity. However, hard technologies take time to produce and have negative environmental impacts, while soft technologies are simple to produce but hard to use. Hence, finding the right balance between hard and soft technology investment is important for the sustainable increase of productivity. In recent years, China has continuously increased its investment in science and technology in aquaculture industry. However, the majority of the investment has gone to hard technology, which has hampered the long-term development of the industry. This paper aims to look at the status quo of the scientific and technological progress of the aquaculture industry in China and explore how the advancement of hard and soft technologies play a role in the economic growth of the aquaculture industry. Transcendental logarithmic production function is employed to calculate the contribution rate of technological progress on China's aquaculture industry, and the contribution rates of hard technologies and soft technologies are examined separately. The results indicate that, from 2012 to 2020, the contribution rate of overall technical progress on aquaculture in China was 80.159%, of which 71.720% came from the progress of hard technologies, while only 8.439% came from the progress of soft technologies. Based on this conclusion, the paper calls for a balance of hard and soft technologies in the aquaculture industry in China to ensure a healthy and sustainable aquaculture industry. Policy suggestions are also put forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jade artifacts produced in prehistoric China continue to generate extensive scholarly interest. In the absence of textual data, inferring how works functioned in Jade Age communities remains challenging. This paper focuses on Hongshan 红山 culture (4500–3000 BCE) jades, a distinctively styled corpus primarily recovered from late fourth millennium BCE graves in northeastern China. Recent finds within and beyond the Hongshan core zone have enriched the jade inventory and expanded the known scope of its stylistic variations. The analysis sheds light on enigmatic types, reveals the complex representational nature of this corpus, and clarifies the mimetic intentions that resulted in the soft rounded forms characteristic of the style. Most objects examined were unearthed at Hongshan ceremonial centers and have sound excavation pedigrees. Their study relies on contextual archaeological data and comparative visual analysis and draws on the broader Hongshan material world. Further considerations include environment, funerary practices, materiality, cognition, and human anatomy. Ultimately, the paper uncovers new paradigms of figural representation that should open fresh investigative avenues for specialists of early China. Preliminary evaluation of jades unearthed further south at Lingjiatan 凌家滩 and Liangzhu 良渚 sites suggests that some late Neolithic societies adopted Hongshan practices. Current evidence hints at members of prehistoric communities attempting, through jade works, to rationalize their physical circumstances and assert their social power by symbolically fusing with elements of their environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The management of international students has become a new challenge that China and most countries in the world must face in the context of the "Belt and Road Initiative" (BRI) and the globalization of higher education. In this paper, we conducted an empirical study on international students in China (ISC) based on a combination of spatial econometric models and analytical methods such as BCG, GeoDetector, and DDCAM, trying to provide a basis for "evidence-based decision-making" by the government in the management of international students and talents. Quantitative analyses revealed significant diversity and spatial effects in the spatio-temporal dynamics of ISCs, with the emergence of star, gazelle, cow, and dog types, suggesting that the scientific management of ISCs requires both local adaptation (spatial differentiation and heterogeneity) and regional collaboration (spatial correlation and autocorrelation). There were many factors affecting the spatio-temporal dynamics of ISCs, and the force of different factors varied considerably, with the key factor more than 0.5 but the auxiliary factor being less than 0.2. Moreover, the factors had significant interaction effects, and a large number of super-interacting factor pairs emerged, with a joint force of more than 0.9, twice the force of a single factor. Generally, the factors had a complex driving mechanism, suggesting that ISC management requires identifying the key and important factors, while attaching emphasis to the synergistic effects among different factors. The recommendation is that China should manage ISCs in spatial zones and introduce differentiated development strategies and policies in different zones. In conclusion, this paper proposes a technical route integrating "dynamic analysis-driving mechanism-policy design" for international students, which is applicable to China, while providing a reference for the management and spatial planning design of international students in other countries in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zhuma Township, which is located in Jinhua City, Zhejiang Province, has a long history of camellia cultivation, holds the title of "the hometown of camellia in China", and is an agricultural town with a strong history characterized by its camellia industry. This paper first overviews the development and application of the theory of "socio-spatial" relationships and then formulates a theoretical framework for analyzing characteristic industrial villages according to this theory. Following the study of Zhuma Township, the process of local, industry-driven rural development is divided into three periods: slow growth, rapid expansion, and orderly transition. Then, we summarize the construction mechanism of characteristic industrial villages from the four levels of social relationship reorganization, industrial value increase, local culture reshaping, and spatial order reconstruction. Finally, we present a guide to the practice of rural construction. This paper aims to provide a useful reference for the construction of characteristic industrial villages on both theoretical and practical levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the impact of capitalizing educational resources on housing prices. As housing has gradually transitioned from a basic social right to a means of accumulating individual and familial wealth, it has emerged as a significant indicator of social stratification and has increasingly become a crucial tool for the intergenerational reproduction of social class. This paper takes Nanjing, China, as a case study and uses the geographically weighted regression model (GWR) and the hedonic pricing model (HPM) to investigate the impact of high-quality primary schools on housing prices. The results show that high-quality educational resources have become the most significant influencing factor on residential prices in Nanjing. The analysis in the mechanism section further indicates that the uneven distribution of educational resources in China is a continuation of the "danwei" system. Moreover, during the urbanization process, these high-quality educational resources are often leveraged by the government and developers, who see them as essential tools to attract investment and inflate housing prices. Therefore, the current overlap of the school district system and the marketization of housing in China not only intensifies residential segregation within the city, leading to severe residential inequality but also rebuilds social segregation within "danwei" and facilitates its reproduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the education field, professional learning communities (PLCs) are regarded as an effective method for fostering professional development for teachers, enhancing student learning and achievement, and promoting school reform. Quality leadership and management are understood to be essential for schools to become effective PLCs. Mainly proposed by Western scholars, existing PLC frameworks explicitly or implicitly assume that PLCs should be initiated and led by teachers themselves, following a bottom-up approach. The goal of this conceptual overview paper is to challenge certain taken-for-granted core principles of Western PLC frameworks by analyzing the current approach to PLCs adopted by preschools in mainland China, which follow a top-down leadership and management approach. We review multiple research streams, including policy frameworks and regulations, as well as the most relevant conceptual, theoretical, and empirical studies published in recent years. After reviewing China's core socio-cultural traditional values, we describe the recent policies that have mandated the establishment and implementation of PLCs in Chinese preschools. We then review several recent studies that demonstrate that, despite profound differences to Western frameworks, PLCs in Chinese preschools are effective in benefitting teachers and highly regarded by the relevant stakeholders. The literature shows that Chinese preschools enact culturally situated versions of PLCs, characterized by some standard PLC principles (e.g., shared vision, collaboration, and collective responsibility) alongside features that resonate with Confucian values (e.g., strong hierarchical structure, guidance of external experts, internal leadership support, and greater emphasis on ecological support rather than personal agency and autonomy). We conclude that Chinese preschools merit international attention, as their approach to leadership and management allow us to reconsider certain core principles of Western PLC frameworks. Future directions for PLC policy and practice are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Farm animal welfare research conducted in China is relatively less accessed and unknown outside of the country, which might create the impression that farm animal welfare receives limited attention in China. This paper aims to offer a comprehensive review of the existing Chinese farm animal welfare literature. CiteSpace software was employed for the analysis and visualization of various aspects of the literature, including the quantity, species, authors, institutions, journals, and keywords. This process helped reveal the research trends, hotspots, and frontiers in the field. The findings from this bibliometric analysis strongly indicate that farm animal welfare is a subject of considerable interest and research activity in China. Farm animal welfare research conducted in China is not commonly accessed or known outside of China, which may lead to the assumption that farm animal welfare receives relatively little attention in China. Therefore, a bibliometric analysis was conducted on the existing Chinese farm animal welfare literature to provide robust evidence to refute this assumption. A total of 1312 peer-reviewed Chinese studies on farm animal welfare published between March 1992 and June 2023 were retrieved from the Web of Science (WoS) and the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database. CiteSpace software was used to analyze and visualize the number, species, authors, institutions, journals, and keywords of the papers. In China, farm animal welfare research has gone through the processes of an early stage (1992–2001), rapid-growth stage (2002–2007), and mature stage (2008–present), and the scale of research continues to grow. Notably, swine and chickens have received priority attention in this area. A Matthew effect was observed for authors and institutions, with relatively little collaboration among authors and institutions. Most of the papers were published in a small number of journals, with an apparent agglomeration characteristic. The research hotspots, summarized as "feed and diet", "environmental impacts and control", "integrated rearing management", "injury and disease", "behavior and technologies for behavior monitoring", "genetic analysis", "welfare during transport and slaughter", "welfare-friendly animal product consumption", "attitudes toward farm animal welfare", and "healthy breeding". The keywords "computer vision", "recognition", "temperature", "precision livestock farming", "laying hen", and "behavior", represent the major research frontiers in the field, which could indicate potential areas of significant future research. The findings of the present bibliometric analysis confirm the fact that farm animal welfare is a field of interest in China. Farm animal welfare research in China tends to be pragmatic, with a strong emphasis on enhancing growth and production performance, as well as product quality, rather than solely concentrating on improving farm animal welfare. This paper provides insightful references that researchers can use to identify and understand the current status and future direction of the farm animal welfare field in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the current imbalance in construction social procurement research toward Western countries with neo-liberal models of public governance. It does this by exploring the potential value of construction social procurement in the Chinese centralized unitary state and socialist market system. Findings from a survey of one hundred and sixty-four professionals from the Chinese construction industry are reported. They highlight the institutional foundations into which social procurement could be implemented and the significant untapped social value that could be created. However, they also show that for social procurement to achieve its full potential in the Chinese construction industry, such policies need to be underpinned by meaningful industry consultation, effective education and clearly mandated targets that create a market for social value. This paper contributes to the global advancement of social procurement research in construction by providing new insights into the implementation of social procurement beyond the narrow confines of the Western political and governmental orthodoxies where such research has hitherto been focused. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After nearly forty years of development, China's land consolidation policies (CLCP) have become an important tool for promoting rural revitalization and sustainable development. However, as a major land management policy, there is still a lack of quantitative evaluation research on its text. This paper establishes an evaluation system for CLCP using text analysis and the PMC-Index model. Based on a reasonable definition of the connotation of land consolidation, this paper collects 313 related policies issued by China's central government from 1982 to 2022, using text analysis to sort out the characteristics of issuance time, policy types, issuing institutions, and cooperation networks. By combining the outcomes of text mining with the previous research results to set evaluation indicators for the PMC-Index model, it distinguishes between comprehensive policies and specialized policies and separately evaluates them. Then, the PMC-Surface is established to clearly display the calculation results. The results show that the evaluation scores of comprehensive policies and specialized policies showed an upward trend over time. This indicates that the content of CLCP is constantly being enriched and expanded. The evaluation scores for different dimensions of comprehensive policies are relatively balanced, whereas there are significant differences in the evaluation scores of various dimensions of specialized policies. Both comprehensive policies and specialized policies have weaknesses in policy functions, incentives and constraints, and implementation guarantees, so improvements may be needed in these areas in the future. This study provides valuable insights into the advantages and disadvantages of a single land consolidation policy in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bourgeoning of e-commerce in the context of the information era has accelerated the urbanization trend by broaching a new horizon of economic and industrial boosters for rural places, epitomized by a great number of "Taobao Villages" in China. This paper has two objectives: (1) explore the process and mechanism of digitalization enabling rural in-situ urbanization represented by e-commerce; (2) nuance the specific case evidence of Daiji Town, where digitalization enabled in-situ urbanization recently. We build up a theoretical framework for digitalization-enabled in-situ urbanization from the juxtaposition of four interlinked elements: industry, talent, rural governance, and land use. It then analyzed the details and evidence of digitalization enabling rural in-situ urbanization through the case study of Daiji Town. The main conclusions of this paper are as follows: First, digitalization plugs rural areas into production and consumption networks in wider contexts, promoting the transformation and prosperity of rural economies. Secondly, the reverse migration of young generations to rural areas becomes the key to rural in-situ urbanization. Thirdly, digitization materializes the urbanization of rural spaces. Finally, digitalization enables the rural transformation and improvement of urban-rural relations in the Global South, which needs to be further explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploring the spatial pattern and development strategies of urbanization from the perspective of the multi-dimensional coordination of population, economy, and land is the key to solving the problems of the urban–rural gap and human–land contradiction. This paper analyzed the spatial agglomeration of population, economy, and construction land area growth rates and explored their coordinated development in Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2010 to 2020 by using the spatial autocorrelation model, elasticity coefficient model, and coupling coordination model. The results are as follows: (1) China's population, economy, and construction land area were all growing, with the highest economic growth and the lowest population growth, and most prefecture-level cities in central and northeastern China had negative population growth. (2) The growth rates of the population, economy, and construction land in Chinese prefecture-level cities had significant positive spatial clustering characteristics; the spatial agglomeration of the economy was the most prominent and the high-value areas were mainly concentrated in western China. (3) The elasticity coefficients between the population, economy, and construction land in most Chinese prefecture-level cities indicate uneven development of urbanization, manifested as population growth lagging behind construction land expansion and further lagging behind economic development. (4) More than 56% of Chinese prefecture-level cities have uncoordinated development among the population, economy, and construction land mainly distributed in northeast China and central China. The results can provide references and decision-making support for promoting the sustainable development of China's new urbanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The comparison of Sogdian images in China and Central Asia has become a hot topic in academic circles in recent years. However, there is no specific comparison of Sogdian images on burial utensils in the existing studies. Accordingly, the author proposes to compare the images on burial utensils by collecting together the remaining materials as much as possible and making corresponding data tables. First and foremost, this paper focuses on the actual quantity of the remains and gives a table, "Statistics of the Sogdian Burial Utensils with Images", to show this quantity for the first time: there are 30 remains of Sogdian burial utensils in China (26 sarcophagi and four ossuaries) and 23 Sogdian burial utensils in Central Asia (all are ossuaries). Secondly, there are several tables based on remaining materials in this paper, including "Distribution of the Shapes of Sogdian Sarcophagi in China", "Historical Period and Shape of Sogdian Ossuaries in Central Asia", "Religious Images Table of Sogdian Sarcophagi in China", "Table of Religious Image Types of the Sogdian Ossuaries in Central Asia" and "Common Religious Images of the Burial Utensils in China and Central Asia". Thirdly, further analysis shows that there are two image systems. Grounded in the above analysis, this paper comes to conclusions at three levels. Firstly, there are two shapes of burial utensils. Sarcophagi are widely seen in China whilst ossuaries are commonly discovered in Central Asia. As a result, the images on the sarcophagi in China are large in size and wide in narrative themes, whereas those on the ossuaries in Central Asia are small in size, emphasizing important content and narrative themes. All are rich in image representation. Secondly, there are three types of religious images on the burial utensils. The comparison results of image types show the common images in three categories: gods, funeral ceremonies and sacred fire sacrifice. Thirdly, the images on burial utensils have different characteristics regarding religious transmission. Zoroastrianism is dominant in Central Asia, while Zoroastrianism, Chinese mythology and Buddhist images are primary in China and images of tomb owners embodying secularity are also widespread in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(1) Background: Inventory management is a key point in the achievement of the virtuous cycle and sustainable development of the real estate industry. In response to the practical needs of city-based policies, this paper constructs a new research approach of "evolution dynamics—risk analysis—performance evaluation—policy design" of real estate inventory, and conducts a case study on the Yangtze River Delta. (2) Methods: This paper studies the change characteristics, trends and spatial patterns of real estate inventory changes in the Yangtze River Delta based on Geographic Information System software, and quantitatively evaluates the risk level and management performance of real estate inventory by introducing the Boston Consulting Group Matrix for corporate management and the Super- Data Envelopment Analysis Model for operations research, providing a basis for policy design. (3) Results: First, the "destocking" policy has gained results to some extent and diversified the inventory evolution, thus alleviating or curbing the negative trend in most cities. Second, the real estate inventory in the Yangtze River Delta is divided into high, low, potential and zero pressure zones by risk levels, and the proportion of cities with increased, decreased and unchanged risk levels is essentially the same. Third, the average real estate inventory management performance index has been steadily improving, but overall, it is still unsatisfactory, with cities in an effective state accounting for 40% and below for a long time. Fourth, real estate inventory and its management performance both show significant spatial effects, with cold and hot spot cities characterized by a "center-periphery" spatial pattern in geographical distribution, and the cities in the study area are classified into four types: super-efficiency, efficiency, inefficiency, and super-inefficiency. Fifth, the real estate inventory in most cities is continuing to grow positively, and a small number of cities have been in the high-risk zone for a long time or become new members of the high-risk zone, making the government and enterprises still faced up with great pressure and challenges in inventory management with the risk level further increased but management performance growing slowly. (4) Conclusions: The study area is divided into four types of policy areas, that is, red key area, yellow important area, green auxiliary area, and path-dependent area, and suggestions for optimization are made from the perspectives of risk control, performance improvement, benchmarking recommendation, and redundancy governance, providing a basis for the government's real estate inventory management policy design and the enterprise's high-quality development decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: Systematic analyzation to assess the spread of AMR bacteria prevalence in retail food products and the subsequent exposure to antibiotic resistance. Out of 13,018 food samples, 5000 samples were contaminated. Meat shows high to medium potential of AMR exposure for Gram-positive and Gram-negative foodborne pathogens. Salmonella and Staphylococcus aureus were two predominant bacteria seen in China and the USA, respectively. Multidrug resistance was detected in most of the food samples from both countries. Food samples were more resistant to β-lactams and tetracyclines. Government bodies were formed to tackle AMR from food. Since the discovery of antibiotics in the 20th century, they have been used to fight against infections. The overuse of antibiotics in the wider environment has resulted in the emergence of multidrug-resistant bacteria. In developing countries such as China and developed countries such as the USA, there is evidence of the high pervasiveness of antibiotic-resistant infections. However, the studies on the spread of antibiotic-resistant microorganisms that inform about the consequences are limited. The aim of our study was to analyze and compare antimicrobial resistance (AMR) identified in published research papers from that found in different food sources, which were published between 2012 and December 2021, covering most retail food items. Out of 132 research papers identified, 26 papers have met our strict criteria and are included in the qualitative and quantitative analysis. The selected papers led to 13,018 food samples, out of which 5000 samples were contaminated, including 2276 and 2724 samples from China and the USA, respectively. Meat, aquatic products, milk, and eggs show high to medium potential for AMR exposure to Gram-positive bacteria such as Staphylococcus, Enterococci, etc. and Gram-negative foodborne pathogens such as Campylobacter, Salmonella, Vibrio, etc. Most of the food samples show antibiotic resistance to β-lactams, tetracycline, quinolones, and aminoglycosides. Retail food products such as meat, sea food, and some other food products, as well as AMR genetics and technically important bacteria, are proposed to be better merged with mitigation strategies and systematic One Health AMR surveillance to minimize the knowledge gaps and facilitate comprehensive AMR risk computation for the consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the Chinese county-level panel data from 2014–2018, in the study reported in this paper, we empirically tested the "complementarity and substitution" effects of internet finance and rural finance on rural economic development using the feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) estimation method. The research data were obtained from the China County Statistical Yearbook. Similarly, the data of agricultural credit societies were obtained from the unique database of the agricultural credit societies of Shaanxi Rural Finance Research Center, while the internet finance development index was obtained from the Digital Finance Research Center of Peking University. In this research, we found that rural finance and internet finance contribute to rural economic growth. In the context of rural economic growth, internet finance and rural finance development show a substitution effect. The scale and efficiency of rural finance contribute to rural economic growth, while the structure of rural finance has the opposite effect. The development of internet finance reduces the marginal contribution of the rural financial scale and efficiency to rural economic growth. It weakens the negative effect of the rustic financial structure on rural economic growth. Furthermore, the development of internet finance contributes to the rural economic growth of counties of high economic levels but hinders the development of counties of low and medium economic levels. In counties with a high economic status, the development of internet finance and rural finance have a complementary effect on rural economic growth, while in counties of low and medium economic levels, we can observe a substitution effect. These assessments provide guidance, a source for policy recommendations and a reference for researchers and policy makers seeking to optimize the structure and break the monopoly pattern of agricultural credit cooperation in the rural financial market and to strengthen innovation and significantly improve the operational level of rural financial institutions. Moreover, the development of internet financial business and technology is necessary to overcome the demerits of traditional financial institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China's pursuit of modernization, the government has introduced the rural revitalization strategy to combat rural decline, foster balanced urban–rural development, and reduce the urban–rural gap. Rural human settlements, as key components of this strategy, play a vital role. This paper examines the types and characteristics of human–earth relationships within rural settlements, emphasizing their significance. Using national land use and population census data, we analyze the spatiotemporal evolution of rural settlements at the county level, investigating landscape pattern changes, assessing the degree of coupling coordination between rural population and settlements, categorizing relationship types and features, and estimating the potential for remediation. Our findings reveal a growing trend in the scale of rural human settlements, particularly sourced from arable land, with significant expansions observed in the North China Plain and Northeast Plain, indicating potential for farmland reclamation and village consolidation. Landscape patterns of rural human settlements exhibit increased fragmentation, complex shapes, and aggregation. We categorize the utilization of rural human settlements into two types, each with four distinct features: human–land coordination is observed in regions characterized by either a higher rural population and larger rural settlement areas, or lower rural population and smaller rural settlement areas. Human–land trade-offs are evident in areas where there is either a higher rural population and smaller rural settlement areas, or lower rural population and larger rural settlement areas. This provides valuable insights for the Chinese government's context-specific implementation of the rural revitalization strategy. It also serves as an experiential reference for the governance of rural human settlements in other developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: The reduviid genus Sycanus Amyot & Serville, 1843, possesses higher aesthetic value and plays a crucial role as a natural enemy in the control of agricultural and forestry pests. However, Sycanus from China has not undergone a comprehensive review for over four decades. Based on both molecular data and morphological evidence, we conducted a systematic review of the 14 Chinese Sycanus species, including a description of three new species. Due to the variability of body coloration and morphological similarity among closely related species, unresolved issues and debates still persist in the taxonomic study of the genus Sycanus from China. In this study, we conducted phylogenetic analyses and species delimitation for Sycanus in China based on a COI DNA barcoding dataset comprising 81 samples. The results revealed that all the samples could be classified into 12 species by integrating molecular analyses with morphological comparison. This paper provides a comprehensive systematic review of the Sycanus species found in China, including descriptions of three new species: S. taiwanensis Zhao & Cai sp. nov., S. flavicorius Li & Cai sp. nov., and S. hainanensis Wang & Cai sp. nov. Furthermore, it is proposed that S. croceovittatus Dohrn, 1859, S. leucomesus Walker, 1873, and S. villicus Stål, 1863, are three synonyms of S. bifidus (Fabricius, 1787); S. bicolor Hsiao, 1979, is a synonym of S. versicolor Dohrn, 1859; and S. hsiaoi Maldonado-Capriles, 1990, is a synonym of S. marginellus Putshkov, 1987. Additionally, brief biological information is provided for two species, S. falleni Stål, 1863, and S. croceus Hsiao, 1979. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is of great theoretical and practical significance to investigate the influence of intelligent city construction on urban innovation. Based on the data of 238 cities in China from 2006 to 2019, this paper utilizes the staggered difference-in-differences (staggered DID) model and the mediating effect model to examine the impact and mechanisms of smart city construction on urban innovation. We find that China's smart city pilot policies significantly promote urban innovation. Mechanism analysis shows that this innovation promotion effect acts through improving urban informatization, government financial expenditure on science and technology, and the upgrading of the city's industrial structure. Further analysis shows that smart city construction has a stronger promoting effect on innovation in cities of a larger scale, that located in the eastern region, and have a lower level of science and education. Overall, our findings provide new insights into urban innovation and objectively assess the impact of smart city construction in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With its early start in urbanization, Europe has accumulated a wealth of practical experience in urban agriculture (UA), exploring various development models. This paper compares and analyzes the characteristic patterns of UA in Europe and China through theoretical research, academic frontier exploration, and case analysis. In order to investigate and analyze theoretical developments and the current state of academic frontiers in a systematic, accessible, and comprehensive approach, the methodology of bibliometric analysis has been utilized. A bibliometric method is applied to analyze relevant data from the Web of Science (WoS) core collection database and 2230 CNKI publications. The case study section conducts separate field research on nine representative European practices of urban food gardening and urban farming. Additionally, the study scrutinizes UA research development and its implementation in Hangzhou, China. Based on the findings of this study, the authors recommend that European approaches to the development of UA in China's future UA practice be taken into account, in particular their methods and strategies for realizing social and cultural benefits. It is imperative to integrate UA projects into urban green space system planning and to rationalize their construction types. Simultaneously, Chinese scholars are encouraged to explore the socio-cultural functions of UA, with a particular focus on urban agricultural heritage conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(1) Background: The decoupling of energy consumption from economic growth in the construction industry is crucial to the sustainable development of the global construction industry. The existing studies focus on the advancements in energy efficiency by designers for building monoliths or construction techniques, involving no exploration of energy efficiency management from a regional perspective, which is unfavorable for the formulation of energy efficiency policies and systematic control of the construction industry by local governments. (2) Methods: From the perspective of regional management, this paper constructs an integrated analysis and application framework of "spatio-temporal characteristics + matching evaluation + policy design" based on the decoupling model and GIS tools. It studies the spatio-temporal characteristics of energy consumption in the construction industry in 30 provinces of China from 2010 to 2019, and its decoupling relationship with the economic development of the construction industry, and proposes an optimal zoning and recommendations for energy consumption in the construction industry, providing a reference for energy conservation management in the construction industry in China. (3) Results: First, the change of energy consumption amount (ECA) in the construction industry in the provinces was dominated by ascent, while the energy consumption intensity (ECI) predominantly decreased, and most provinces are still in a period of growth or plateau in energy consumption. Second, ECA and ECI had prominent spatial heterogeneity and aggregation. High-energy-consuming regions are concentrated along the coast and along the Yangtze River, while low-energy-consuming regions are mainly clustered in remote areas, such as the northeast, northwest, and southwest of China. Energy consumption shows a clear north-south difference in intensity, with high-intensity regions clustered in the north compared to low-intensity regions in the south. Third, most of the provinces were in strong negative decoupling, expansive coupling, and weak decoupling, and better decoupling regions were mainly gathered in south and central China. Nearly one half of these provinces showed decoupling degradation and only a few achieved evolution, with evolutionary regions clustered mainly in central and southern China. The northeast and northwest were the key problem areas of energy-saving transformation in China's construction industry. (4) Conclusion: The 30 provinces were divided into three types: leader, intermediate, and laggard, and the development goals and suggestions on low energy consumption in the construction industry for three zones were put forward, significantly improving the precision of policy design and implementation. The study in this paper expands the research perspective on energy saving management in the construction industry and provides a methodology and basis for developing energy efficiency policies and plans for the construction industry in China and similar developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The precise allocation and efficient use of industrial land are necessary for the development and optimization of urban production space; however, the mismatches between urban industrial land consumption and the growth of manufacturing are becoming more serious and has become the primary obstacle to sustainable urban development. Methods: Based on a combination of the Boston Consulting Group matrix, spatial mismatch model, decoupling index, GIS, and Geodetector tools, this paper conducts an empirical study on the Yangtze River Delta region in an attempt to reveal the spatio-temporal evolution of the mismatch between urban industrial land changes and the growth of manufacturing and provide a basis for spatial planning and land management in the new era. Results: The distribution of urban industrial land is characterized by high heterogeneity and agglomeration, the coexistence of expansion and contraction, and increasingly complex and diversified changes. Gross domestic product, government revenue, the added value of tertiary industry, and government investment in science and technology indicate that the goal orientation and scale effect of economic growth play a decisive role in the allocation of urban industrial land and that the influence of industrial structures and technological innovation is rapidly increasing. The interaction between the different factors is a bifactor enhancement, for example, land used for logistics and storage, utilities, commercial and other services, and the import and export trade, which have a strong synergistic enhancement effect. The mismatches between urban industrial land changes and the growth of manufacturing are still within a reasonable degree but there is an increasing number of cities with negative mismatches, making it necessary to implement a differentiated spatial adjustment and management policy. Conclusions: Compared with the mismatches of mobile resources such as labor, finance, and capital, the mismatches of immovable land resources have an increasing impact with more serious consequences and it is harder to make optimizations and corrections. However, the academic community has limited knowledge about land resource mismatches. By quantitatively assessing the mismatches between industrial land consumption and the growth of manufacturing in YRD cities, this paper argues that the mismatches can be rectified through spatial and land use planning and suggests the establishment of a zoning management and governance system to achieve the optimal allocation of urban industrial land resources through the implementation of a "standard land + commitment system" and industrial land protection lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic expansion has caused increasingly serious land resource problems, and the decoupling of urban industrial land expansion from economic development has become a big topic for intensive development. The current research has mainly concerned industrial land efficiency, a single, static indicator, compared to a decoupling model, which takes into account two variables and gives a full expression of the spatio-temporal dynamic characteristics. However, little attention has been paid to the relationship between industrial land expansion and economic development in China from the perspective of decoupling. Based on a combination of Tapio's decoupling model and spatial analysis methods, this paper investigates the decoupling relationship between industrial land expansion and economic development in Chinese cities from 2010 to 2019. On that basis, we divided the study area into three policy zones and made differentiated policy recommendations. In addition, based on the decoupling model, we obtained the decoupling indices of the cities and grouped the cities into eight decoupling types. After the spatial autocorrelation analysis, we further verified the spillover effect of decoupling with the results of urban spatial differentiation. This paper draws the following conclusions: (1) Urban industrial land expansion and economic development exhibit marked and increasingly significant spatial heterogeneity and agglomeration. (2) Industry and economy are in weak decoupling in most cities, but there are a growing number of cities in negative decoupling. (3) Decoupled cities are shifting from the southeast coast to the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River and Yangtze River, while negatively decoupled cities keep spreading from northeast and south China to their periphery, with clear signs of re-coupling. (4) It is necessary to develop urban industrial land supply and supervision policies according to local actuality and to implement differentiated control of industrial land for cities and industrial sectors with different decoupling types. To some extent, this paper reveals the evolution dynamics, performances, and strategies of industrial land, providing a decision basis for industrial land management policies and industrial planning in China and other countries at similar stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the era of the urban economy and service economy, the decoupling of service industry land expansion from economic growth has always been a key measure to evaluate sustainable and healthy development. Based on the decoupling model and GIS spatial analysis method, this paper conducted an empirical study of Chinese cities from 2012 to 2019. Results: (1) Increasing spatial heterogeneity, correlation and agglomeration of land expansion were found in China's urban service industry and its economic growth; (2) Most cities were in weak decoupling, with evolved, degraded and unchanged cities accounting for one-third each, and the number of cities in negative decoupling was increasing, leading to increasingly diverse and complex decoupling relationships; (3) From the perspective of changes in the urban service industry land and its decoupling from economic growth, HH cities were clustered in the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei and Chengdu–Chongqing urban agglomerations in a continuous belt pattern, while LL and HL cities were mostly in the north, especially in the northeast, creating many cluster-like agglomerations that have become problematic spaces; (4) A significant synergistic effect was identified between the factors of urban permanent population, value added of the secondary industry, per capita GDP, government financial expenditure, international trade, foreign direct investment, total retail of commodities, and authorized patents, with factor pairs formed showing nonlinear enhancement. The factor value added of the secondary industry had the largest direct impact, while urban permanent population and foreign direct investment led in terms of net synergies; (5) It is recommended to introduce classified and differentiated urban service industry land use policies, plan and build a number of national, provincial and municipal modern service industry clusters, demonstrate changes in land supply and use, build a scientific and efficient land resource allocation and management system, guard against and prevent recoupling and effectively improve the ability of cities to achieve high-quality economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting quality certification of agricultural products is a matter of the sustainable development of agriculture and the transformation of the global agri-food system, and cooperatives are an important carrier to achieve the above policy goals. However, few scholars have included external resources and cooperative quality certification behavior in an analytical framework from the perspective of resource embedding. This study combines resource dependence theory and embeddedness theory, based on survey data from 230 agricultural cooperatives in six counties of Sichuan Province, China. This paper constructs a theoretical analysis framework of government resources, market resources and cooperative quality certification, and uses binary Logit regression model to empirically study the correlation between external resources and cooperative quality certification. The results show that: (1) Cooperatives do not receive a high proportion of external resource support, with 30% and 47% receiving support from the government and market respectively; the proportion of cooperatives carrying out product quality certification was relatively low, about 29.57%. (2) Government resources and market resources have a significant positive effect on improving the quality certification of cooperatives, and the promotion effect of the market is greater than that of the government. (3) Mechanism analysis shows that government resources promote quality certification in cooperatives mainly through regulations on agricultural inputs, while market resources can jointly play a role on regulations on agricultural inputs and market expectations for certified agricultural products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highway infrastructure construction is regarded as one of the effective policy tools used to promote the flow of production factors and upgrade the industrial structure in China, and it may also be an important precondition to improving Cultivated Land Use Efficiency (CLUE). This paper uses a slack-based model (SBM) based on provincial-level panel data from China from 2004 to 2017 to measure CLUE. Then a dynamic spatial Durbin model and a panel threshold regression model were established to analyze the spatial spillover effect and threshold effect of highway infrastructure construction on CLUE. The results showed that the CLUE of China has a fluctuating but overall rising trend. The dynamic spatial Durbin model demonstrated that the Chinese government's policy of supporting highway infrastructure construction has played an important role in promoting CLUE by spatial spillover effects, and the driving effect of expressways and first–second highways on CLUE is particularly significant in this regard. More interestingly, the results of the panel threshold regression indicated that there is a single threshold effect in the influence of highway infrastructure construction on CLUE. This paper suggested that the spatial correlation between regions should be considered in the construction of regional highway infrastructure and land use planning to improve CLUE. Moreover, the planning of highway infrastructure construction should be balanced according to the actual demand of economic and agricultural development, so as to promote the full flow and reasonable allocation of cultivated land use factors among regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]