Urban-rural integration is not merely a matter of factor mobility or spatial coordination, but an institutional issue concerning the restructuring of rural production relations, organizational capacity, and income distribution. The key to overcoming the urban-rural dual structure lies not in continuing to position rural areas as passive entities subject to urban absorption, capital-driven transformation, or the inflow of production factors, but in activating the rural areas' own organizational capacity and endogenous development potential. To this end, focusing on a question with significant political-economic implications: During the process of integrated urban-rural development, how can we fully leverage capital, technology, and market forces while preventing the allocation of rural resources, the protection of farmers' rights and interests, and the distribution of surplus labor from being unidirectionally shaped by the capital-dominated logic? against the background of Chinese modernization, this paper proposes the concept of a “labor-led operating mechanism” to explain the foundational role of new rural collective economic organizations in urban-rural integration. It argues that the rise of a large number of “absentee contract holders” has detached land contracting rights from actual agricultural operation, weakened the coordinating function of collective ownership, and intensified land fragmentation, abandonment, and industrial hollowing-out. The key to resolving these problems lies not in simply relying on capital entering the countryside, but in building on rural collective land ownership, using new collective economic organizations to coordinate land, organize farmers, regulate capital embedding, and secure the subject position of farmers and collective members through arrangements of income rights and residual claims. Drawing on cases such as Dongzhenguan Village, Tunxi Village, Tiechong Township, Sanjianxi Village, and Yakou Village, the paper further shows that the labor-led operating mechanism can reduce transaction costs, improve agricultural efficiency, restrain excessive capital dominance, and provide an institutional path for addressing the structural dilemma of “no grain, no stability; no industry, no prosperity; no collective organization, no implementation” through a three-in-one structure of land coordination, organizational integration, and internalized income distribution.

Developmental security is a high-level strategic security idea that emphasizes balancing the dialectical relationship between security and development, advocating sustainable security through economic and social development. Food security, as a fundamental project and important safeguard of national security in China, is currently facing external pressures like global structural imbalances in food supply and demand, the control of international food industry chains by multinational corporations, and the financialization of food. Meanwhile, the development of domestic agriculture also face multiple shortcomings, such as low levels of intelligence and production efficency. 
Therefrom, the application of developmental security concept in food security emphasizes the implementation of comprehensive measures across multiple domains—including technological innovation, food safety regulation, addressing climate change, environmental protection, supply chain management, and socioeconomic development—to enhance the stability and sustainability of food production and supply, and to achieve the deep integration of food security with socioeconomic development. Accordingly,
it’   s   important for China to follow the principle of ‘relying on domestic production while moderately importing’, working together on the international dimension by engaging in global food governance and nurturing local food enterprises, and domestically through market regulation and agricultural technology empowerment, to build an effective food security system and strengthen the internal driving force for food security through development. So, applying the idea of developmental security to food security can provide long-term support for the country’s ability to be self-sufficient in food and handle risks, which is highly significant for the long-term development of China’s food security amid a global food crisis.

The confluence of profound global changes and the deep restructuring of global value chains, coupled with intensifying geopolitical rivalry, the resurgence of protectionism, camp-based fragmentation, “decoupling and chain-breaking”, and governance fragmentation, has persistently disrupted the Asia-Pacific regional production network, posing multiple challenges to the stability of regional industrial and supply chains. Constrained by the diverging interests between developed and developing economies, the “spaghetti bowl effect” generated by overlapping regional trade agreements, the inherent soft-constraint nature of the “Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation（APEC） approach”, and the leadership deficit in regional governance, existing governance mechanisms fall short of effectively addressing these challenges. Grounded on the theories such as global value chain and regional collaborative governance, and on the basis of defining the conceptual essence of industrial and supply chain resilience cooperation, this paper constructs an analytical framework encompassing influencing factors, logical mechanisms, operational pathways, and governance strategies, and conducts theoretical analysis and case-based validation of resilience cooperation. The findings reveal that Asia-Pacific industrial and supply chain resilience cooperation faces structural dilemmas including geopolitical camp-based fragmentation, fragmentation of free trade rules, imbalances in value chain division of labor, and the absence of cross-border emergency governance mechanisms. These challenges necessitate a paradigm shift from passive risk avoidance to active chain consolidation through institutionalized cooperation. Accordingly, the paper proposes that China should leverage the major opportunity of hosting the 33rd Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation（APEC）  Economic Leaders’ Meeting in 2026, strengthen its role and responsibility as a major country, and advocate for the establishment of innovative mechanisms for APEC industrial and supply chain resilience cooperation that are open, inclusive, feature mutual recognition of rules, complementary gradient division of labor, and joint risk governance, so as to contribute China’s solutions to maintain the stability of the Asia-Pacific production network and promoting regional economic integration.

The Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) is the longterm strategic goal of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) for advancing regional economic integration. However, its construction has been progressing slowly, constrained by geopolitical rivalry, marked disparities in members’ development levels, divergences in rules and standards, and overlapping and conflicting institutional arrangements. The year 2026 marks both the 20th anniversary of the FTAAP vision and China’s third tenure as APEC host, offering a critical window to address these challenges. This paper systematically reviews the twodecade evolution of the FTAAP and analyses it from the dual perspectives of driving forces and impediments. It identifies four major driving forces: jointly countering sluggish global growth and trade protectionism, providing a regional laboratory for WTO reform, mitigating the “spaghetti bowl” effect, and vying for the initiative in rulemaking on nextgeneration trade and investment issues. Concurrently, it identifies four major impediments: divergent aspirations among members, fragmentation of the regional rule system, the absence of governance frameworks in emerging areas, and Sino-U.S. strategic competition. Accordingly, the paper proposes pathways for China to spearhead a breakthrough in FTAAP development, including enhancing the participation capacity of developing economies, promoting the convergence and integration of RCEP and CPTPP, deepening practical cooperation in emerging fields, and managing Sino-U.S. differences with an open mindset. By pursuing the greatest denominator to build regional consensus, this paper offers a Chinese approach for the construction of an Asia-Pacific community.

The production function reconstruction promoted by the dark factory poses a fundamental challenge to higher education talent cultivation, specifically manifested as a three-dimensional disconnect in knowledge, ability, and value. The deeper essence lies in the accelerated depreciation of specialized human capital relied upon by traditional education, while the supply of general learning abilities, adaptability, and cross-disciplinary integration needed by the intelligent economy is seriously insufficient. To resolve this contradiction, this paper constructs a four-dimensional collaborative ecosystem encompassing universities, industry, government, and society, repositioning the four core functions of the higher education industry-education integrated talent cultivation system: knowledge source, capacity incubation, ecological connection, and value leadership. On this basis, it proposes paradigm adjustment and reconstruction paths for industry-education integration talent cultivation from the perspectives of concepts, systems, and mechanisms; and furthermore, combining the advantages of national strategy guidance, rich industrial scenarios, and institutional concentration, it points out the need for a gradual reform strategy of “strategic leadership—pilot breakthroughs—ecological cultivation.” The study expands on human capital theory in the era of intelligent economy, providing theoretical support and practical reference for the integration and upgrading of higher education in the process of Chinese-style modernization.

The digital revolution has changed the way manufacturing products are produced, value operated, and value created and distributed, reshaped industrial organization competition patterns, promoted the restructuring of global value chains, and forced traditional manufacturing to accelerate the pace of transformation and upgrading. Finding effective digital transformation models to promote manufacturing value chain upgrading is crucial. Addresses the limitations of existing research, which often employs a single perspective or relies on the analysis of a single case or small sample sizes, this paper defines “effective digital transformation model” as a specific condition configuration formed under the synergy of technology, organization, and environment factors that can significantly drive manufacturing value chain upgrading. Based on the technology-organization-environment (TOE) perspective, the paper selects Chinese A-share listed manufacturing companies as research samples, uses NCA, fsQCA, and PSM methods to analyze and test the models and upgrading effects of how technology-organization-environment driving factors promote manufacturing digital transformation under the guidance of value chain upgrading. The study finds that the internal-external collaborative digital transformation, led by digital technology and assisted by organization and environment, helps promote manufacturing value chain upgrading. The results provide a new approach and method for manufacturing digital transformation, and have certain reference significance for strategic decision-making and organizational management.

Digital technology has become a key pathway for traditional enterprises to overcome resource constraints and achieve high-quality development. However, process-oriented research on how traditional process-based manufacturing enterprises reshape their market competitiveness through digital transformation remains limited. In particular, no systematic theoretical explanation has yet been established regarding the internal mechanisms by which dynamic capabilities are specifically generated and evolve at different stages of transformation. Dynamic capabilities refer to a firm’s ability to adjust and optimize internal and external resources in response to rapid changes in the external environment; this concept provides an appropriate analytical framework for understanding the evolution of capabilities during the digital transformation of process-oriented enterprises. Based on dynamic capabilities theory, this study conducts an exploratory multi-case study focusing on three typical process-oriented copper processing manufacturers to construct a model of dynamic capabilities for corporate digital transformation. It finds that the digital transformation of traditional manufacturing enterprises sequentially undergoes three stages: “digitization of key processes—computerization of management and control—industry-wide service platforming”, and that this evolutionary path exhibits universality across enterprises of various sizes. Mechanism analysis further indicates that the digital transformation process is highly coupled with the development of dynamic capabilities, with the three stages respectively giving rise to dynamic capabilities in technology application, scenario integration, and innovation management. This paper expands the scope of application of dynamic capabilities theory in the context of digital transformation within traditional process-oriented manufacturing, providing guidance for traditional manufacturing enterprises to advance their digital transformation in phases and build dynamic capabilities.

As artificial intelligence (AI) makes breakthroughs from information processing to affective understanding and generation, emotional laborers are undergoing profound transformations: their anxiety over being replaced is escalating, while they endure increasingly normalized emotional exhaustion driven by growing demand for emotional services. However, existing research on the integration of AI into emotional labor predominantly focuses on identifying issues and warning of potential risks, yet lacks a systematic exploration of how AI technology can positively empower emotional laborers. The intervention of AI may afford emotional laborers the potential of reducing surface acting and enhancing deep acting—this is precisely where the value of AI-driven labor division and empowerment lies. For this reason, based on emotional labor theory, this study focuses on the mechanisms by which AI impacts emotional labor, and identifies two core pathways: first, AI alleviates surface acting by delegating certain emotional tasks, freeing workers from draining emotional labor and effectively mitigating emotional exhaustion and job burnout; second, AI enhances deep acting by improving its quality and effectiveness, fostering positive interactions in face-to-face services and delivering high-quality emotional value to clients. These two pathways synergize to drive the transition of emotional labor from performative service to genuine service. This research reveals the unique value and mechanisms of AI’s intervention in emotional labor, offering new perspectives on the collaboration boundary between AI and human labor, while also providing theoretical support and practical guidance for improving the quality and deepening the development of emotional labor.

The listing behavior of enterprises is an important force in promoting the development of regional equity markets. However, the academic community has so far paid little attention to the signal composition and transmission mechanisms of regional equity markets. This paper adopts a micro-level perspective—focusing on the behavioral motivations of market participants—to examine the listing behavior of 1428 small and medium-sized enterprises listed on the Hunan Provincial regional equity market, which are distributed across all 14 prefecture-level cities in the province. By incorporating theories such as signaling theory into its research framework, extending the data scope beyond individual enterprises to include market-related dimensions—including policies and environmental factors—and introduces heterogeneity variables, and utilizing panel regression methods and the ordinary least squares (OLS) linear regression model, it investigates how distinct signals emanating from different types of market participants influence the listing decisions of enterprises on the provincial regional equity market. The research finds that market sector characteristics, local policies, and signals from listed companies have significantly positive incentive effect on corporate listing behavior, while sector strength (conditions) has a significant inhibitory effect; Meanwhile, local government debt levels, fairness of competition environment, and financing environment have differentiated regulatory effects on corporate listing behavior. Based on the findings, the paper proposes suggestions on how to use signaling theory to guide the listing behavior of enterprises in regional equity markets.

Gambling arrangement is a common commercial design in financing agreements. The current IPO regulatory rules require companies to clear their gambling arrangements before filing, which has the drawback of illogical content and can easily lead to institutional avoidance behavior by gambling participants. The root cause lies in the fact that the structure and function of gambling arrangements have not been fully recognized. From the perspective of equity financing, public offering, and listing as a whole, gambling arrangements are one of the advantageous shareholder rights of investors, residing in financing agreements; The rights structure can be designed differently based on the form of financing, and essentially still revolves around the arrangement of equity; Its legal function is to strengthen the investor’s supervisory power over the actual controller and reduce the agency cost between the investor and the actual controller. Under the registration system, the securities issuance review system should fully respect and respond to the spontaneous arrangements of the market, reform the “one size fits all” response rules, and make differential treatment from the perspective of agreement participants, ownership of underlying equity, and time points for cleaning up, in order to achieve the institutional connection between enterprise financing and investor protection.

How intangible cultural heritage (ICH) can effectively empower tourism consumption constitutes a common issue concerning cultural inheritance and industrial development. Existing research, however, lacks a systematic comparative analysis of different ICH cultural tourism scenario models, as well as a systematic comparative framework applicable to various types of ICH scenarios; this makes it difficult to identify the similarities and differences among these models in terms of their driving mechanisms and effectiveness. Therefore, adopting the theory of scenes as the analytical lens, this paper examines five typical emerging tourism consumption scenarios oriented by ICH in Guangdong Province. Through multiplecase comparative analysis, five pathways through which ICH empowers tourism consumption are identified, and the core driving mechanism—termed the “authenticityoriented dynamic equilibrium”—is revealed. The findings demonstrate significant differences among these pathways in terms of spatial carriers, modes of embedding intangible cultural heritage, and operating entities. The key to their success lies in striking a dynamic balance between preserving the authenticity of cultural heritage and ensuring its market adaptability in tourism consumption. These findings provide theoretical interpretation and practical references for the differentiated development of intangible cultural heritage tourism consumption scenarios.

The establishment of credit relations requires not only that transacting parties be able to identify the basis for future performance, but also that the relevant rights be secured and realized through corresponding institutional arrangements. Existing research has extensively elucidated the historical institutions related to the establishment of credit in ancient China; however, this paper adopts a different research approach from those that primarily examine specific institutions, tools, or types of documents. Instead, it uses collateral and documentary instruments as a framework, treating them as two entry points for observing different mechanisms of credit formation, examines the formation and institutional logic of two modes of credit formation. The study finds that credit based on pledged property links identifiable assets of ascertainable value to future repayment, whereas credit based on written instruments fixes prior payment facts or specific claims to payment in a verifiable form. The distinction between the two lies not in the material contrast between “physical objects” and “paper,” but in the credit functions performed by particular objects once they enter into transactions, giving rise to different arrangements for performance assurance, responsibility allocation, and conditions of applicability. Their common institutional significance lies in enabling unsettled repayment or payment obligations to be processed repeatedly through relatively stable institutional procedures. For contemporary credit systems, this historical comparison suggests that the role of credit should not remain confined to information aggregation and evaluation, but should be realized in concrete transactions and subject to appropriate constraints regarding contexts of use, responsibility allocation, and institutional boundaries.