Industrial policy is the government’s guidance and intervention in industrial development to achieve economic and social goals, and it seeks to steer the direction of industrial development, facilitate industrial structure upgrades, and improve social welfare. Based on panel data on 31 provinces in China from 2011 to 2022, this study examines the effects of industrial promotion from China’s Five-Year Plans on corporate innovation performance using a difference-in-differences (DID) model. The study findings indicate that industrial promotion from China’s Five-Year Plans promotes corporate innovation performance, and the basic conclusion remains robust when changing how firms’ innovation is measured, removing provincial policy interference, excluding the four municipalities in China, and utilizing the PSM-DID model. Moreover, this paper explores how industrial promotion influences firms’ innovation performance. The mechanism analysis reveals that industrial promotion from China’s Five-Year Plans encourages firms’ innovation through tax incentives, government subsidies, and credit support. In addition, heterogeneity tests find that industrial promotion has a more significant effect on corporate innovation among small-scale firms and firms operating in highly competitive industries and regions characterized by high marketization. The empirical findings presented provide evidence for enhancing corporate innovation performance through industry promotion in China’s Five-Year Plans and offer insights that can refine the formulation of Five-Year Plans.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of political promotion on the productivity of manufacturing firms using the database of Chinese industrial enterprises from 1998 to 2007. We found that the political promotion of officials had a negative impact on manufacturing firm productivity, and this impact varied according to the characteristics of officials and enterprises. In addition, there was an age "ceiling effect" among Chinese municipal officials. Further research showed that the regional level of rule of law mitigated the negative effect of political promotion on the productivity of manufacturing firms. Finally, this paper makes policy recommendations for improving the promotion mechanism of officials, enhancing regional legalization, and transforming government functions.

Financial development and industrial structure optimization are two-wheeled engines for promoting high-quality development, but the causal identification of the two is still poorly understood. This paper addresses this research gap by comprehensively analyzing the relationship between them. Regional economic growth is a necessary condition for achieving high-quality development. Taking China as an example, this study empirically examines the role of financial development and industrial structure optimization in high-quality development using the entropy method, fixed effects, mediation effects and instrumental variable regression. The study results show that (i) financial development has actively promoted regional economic growth. (ii) The driving effect on the central and western regions is greater than that on the eastern region. (iii) There are differences in the mediating effect of industrial structure optimization and rationalization between different levels of financial development and economic growth. (iv) In addition, the mediating effect of industrial structure optimization is larger in the eastern region than in the central and western regions. (v) The mediating effect of industrial structure rationalization is not obvious in the eastern region, but has a masking effect in the central and western regions. Our findings provide new strategies for financial development and industrial structure optimization in developing countries.

The digital economy exerts both positive and negative influences on urban sustainable development, yet there is a notable gap in the existing research concerning its impact on energy intensity and the underlying mechanisms. this study pioneers the investigation of a nonlinear relationship between the digital economy and energy intensity, revealing a significant inverted U-shaped relationship. Specifically, we observe a noteworthy reduction in energy intensity when the digital economy index surpasses 0.286. Our empirical findings indicate that the digital economy not only directly influences energy intensity but also exerts an indirect impact through initiatives such as the promotion of green innovation and the agglomeration of high-tech industries. Importantly, the promotional effects of the digital economy exhibit heterogeneity with respect to geographical location, resource endowment, and urban scale. This paper contributes to the theoretical understanding of information technology in urban green development by analyzing the mechanisms of the digital economy at the urban level and its intricate impact on energy intensity.

Public diplomacy is a significant factor in promoting policy communication, people-to-people bonds, and the protection of foreign assets between two nations, but there is little research on the economic worth of public diplomacy. Python was used to crawl the daily search frequency of "China", "African countries", and related terms to construct the heat index of China-Africa public diplomacy during 2011-2019, and a two-way fixed effect model was developed to examine the impact of public diplomacy on China’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) in Africa. The empirical results show that public diplomacy has a considerable favorable effect on China’s OFDI in Africa, and after a series of robustness tests, the basic conclusion still holds. Heterogeneity tests show the investment promotion effect of public diplomacy is more pronounced in sub-Saharan Africa and that the promotion mechanism exhibits the characteristics of poverty alleviation and risk aversion. In addition, the promotion effect of public diplomacy on China’s OFDI becomes greater as time goes on. In terms of impact mechanisms, public diplomacy may promote OFDI by enhancing financing capacity and improving national governance. The research conclusion has policy implications for promoting China-Africa public diplomacy and investment cooperation in the new era.

The manufacturing sector must incorporate digitalization and greening as crucial strategies to attain high level of development in the context of the digital economy, given its significant role in quality of environment. Most of existing studies explore net effect of a single or several factors on the digitalization or greening in the manufacturing industry. Limited investigation has been done to integrate various factors impacting the connection and synchronized advancement of digitalization and greening within the manufacturing. Factors affecting the synergy of digitalization and green change within manufacturing are recognized in this article, and a theoretical framework is established to analyze. FsQCA tool is also put into use to survey configurational cases, which contains synergy degree of green digitalization from 30 provinces’ manufacturing in China. Results show that: (1) Between 2007 and 2020, the development level of digital-green integration in the manufacturing industry shows an upward trend. There are three types of collaborative modes, namely, "industrial robot driven" "market development driven" and "market development driven - industrial robot driven", with each mode consisting of at least one to four equivalent pathways. (2) The marketization level and application of industrial robots are the important external and internal pulling forces that drive the synergy degree of digitalization and green change within manufacturing industry, respectively.(3) The influencing factors of the collaborative mode choice of digital-green development within manufacturing industry are complementary, among which, the degree of marketization is similar to the role of industrial robots in the configuration, which are capable to weaken the negative impact from insufficient government R&D investment support under specific conditions; (4) The non-high collaborative state of digital green in manufacturing industry is mainly due to the low level of marketization, openness, and economic development, as well as the low application rate of industrial robots and software products. This study enriches the theoretical understanding on digitalization and green change of manufacturing industry. Meanwhile, it also provides insights to advance the integrated and synergistic advancement of digital green transformation in manufacturing practice.

Green innovation, as a sustainable development approach, can synergistically promote high-quality economic and social development. We select China's A-share-listed manufacturing corporations from 2011 to 2021 as the research sample to empirically study the impact of executive academic experience on green innovation in manufacturing corporations. Further, we test the relationship between executive academic experience and green innovation in manufacturing corporations under the mediating role of corporate social responsibility and the moderating role of heterogeneous environmental regulations. The study shows that (1) executive academic experience helps to promote green innovation in manufacturing corporations; (2) executive academic experience is conducive to promoting the fulfillment of social responsibility by manufacturing corporations; (3) corporate social responsibility plays a mediating role between executive academic experience and green innovation in manufacturing corporations; (4) environmental regulation positively moderates the relationship between executive academic experience and green innovation in manufacturing corporations, and both formal environmental regulation and informal environmental regulation positively moderated the promotion of green innovation in manufacturing corporations by executive academic experience.

The issue of food security has become a global challenge, and it is therefore crucial to seek measures to ensure food security. As an emerging economic model, the digital economy is regarded as the most effective tool for the modernization of agricultural development. As a large food-producing country, China faces serious problems of agricultural non-point source pollution and food loss and waste. The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of digital village construction on food security. We measure the level of digital village construction and food security by entropy method and use the spatial Durbin model to analyze them. In this paper, we found that digital village construction facilitates food security not only in the region but also in neighboring regions. In addition, we found that the promotion effect is significant in main grain producing regions, while the opposite result is found in non-main grain producing regions. We hold that the application of the digital economy in the countryside has played an obvious role in promoting food security in main grain producing provinces, and provides important experimental evidence for reference to ensure food security in the future.

Educational equity is the foundation of social equity, and education equalization is one of the serious issues to be solved by the government. This work considers one education equalization reform conducted by Suzhou Industrial Park of China, namely, the comprehensive "five to nine" (CFTN) housing purchase admission qualification adjustment policy, as an example and uses the resold housing transaction data to identify the effect of the equalization policy by the difference-in-differences (DID) method. Based on this natural experiment, the quantitative assessment results show that (1) the CFTN policy has a significantly positive effect on housing prices in nine-year consistent (NYC) school districts that belong to high-quality school districts; (2) the CFTN policy has no significant effect on housing prices in non-NYC consistent school districts that belong to ordinary school districts. These results uncover that the one-size-fits-all CFTN policy can only obtain significant housing price equilibrium effects in school districts above a certain level of education quality. For regions with backward education levels, the policy is ineffective. For these regions, continuously increasing high-quality educational resources and increasing educational service levels are essential solutions to reduce educational inequality.

The digital transformation of manufacturing industry can promote the development of green transformation and promote the differentiation of workers’ skill structure; On the other hand, it will also hinder the green development due to the huge energy consumption generated by the application of digital technology and facilities. In addition, the green transformation of manufacturing industry will also have differentiated impacts on the employment of labour with different skills due to the innovation of green technology. The existing research has not discussed too much about the interaction among the digital transformation and green transformation in manufacturing industry and labour structure. So, this paper uses the PVAR model to examine the dynamic relationship between digital and green transformation within the industrial sector from the perspective of labour structure, specifically analyzing the impact difference across regions. The results suggest that there is a reciprocal connection between the digitization of manufacturing sector and the labour structure, particularly in the eastern region of China, but the overall interaction between the two remains weak. The interactive between the green transformation of manufacturing industry and the labour structure in the central and western areas has been delayed over periods 1-6. Digital and green manufacturing transformation reinforce each other in central and western regions. However, the digital revolution in the manufacturing industry is hindered by the green transformation in eastern region.