Ecological crisis is resulted from capitalism’s development mode with capital accumulation as its basic logic, and it thus runs inevitably at the expense of the ecological environment. Reflection on the form of human advancement triggered by the ecological crisis tells that green capitalism, though it proposes methods to control environmental pollution and protect natural resources under capitalist civilization, ignores the fundamental contradiction between the capitalist system and the ecological environment. In contrast, the new form of human advancement embraces ecological civilization and the green culture it connotes is a scientific socialist culture that pursues the harmony between human beings and nature, and thus is bound to promote the progress and development of human civilization. The development of green culture in the new era will certainly provide Chinese wisdom and Chinese solutions for the construction of global ecological civilization and the sustainable development of the world.

Political development, as an important element of Chinese modernization, runs through the Chinese Communists’ pioneering of Chinese modernization, with which the ideology of political development with unique Chinese characteristics has been formed. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, in particular since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the CPC Central Committee with comrade Xi Jinping at its core has profoundly grasped the main line of people-centred logic and creatively enriched the people-centred political development thought in the new era, which distinctly embodies the people’s nature of Chinese modernization as well as profound modernization implications, providing a brand new explanation of the path of socialist politics with Chinese characteristics, the logic of development and the strategy of development. In the process of the formation and development of Chinese modernization, on the basis of clarifying the intrinsic relationship between the two, we need to clarify the rich connotation and reasonable kernel of the people-centred political development thought in the new era, which is considered to be a scientific theoretical system consisting of fundamental issues, goals, motivation and value orientation and thus an important part of the theoretical system of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Facing the new journey, we need to plan the practical strategy of political development in the Chinese modernization in terms of political development strategy, governmental governance mode, improvement of citizens’ political participation and construction of democratic discourse system, so as to provide a strong political guarantee for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

Common prosperity, the prosperity of all people in material and cultural-ethical terms, leads the revitalization of rural culture in the Chinese modernization drive, and renders such revitalization an inevitable requirement and a necessary stage in realizing the common prosperity of the people. In achieving common prosperity, people have carried out creative transformation and innovative development of rural culture, thus forging a culture of common prosperity which activates the new vitality of rural culture, satisfies the people’s needs for a better life, and further builds the foundation of a strong cultural countryside, thus leading the revitalization of rural society in all aspects. In building the rural community, we should, based on the empowerment of the new quality productive forces, forge the production collectives for common prosperity to push ahead with the building of a cultural sector for Party-building; we should build the common prosperity communities to reshape the family culture and public culture; we should build the common prosperity rural industries, and vigorously innovate the countryside-featured culture, so as to make the new quality rural communities as the practice carriers of the rural cultural revitalization and enhancement of the cultural self-confidence.

Based on the micro-research data of 501 research subjects in Changsha, Hunan Province, the study analyzes the influencing factors and motives of children’s willingness to pay for their parents’ smart eldercare by adopting the ordered multi-classification logistic model, aided by the theory of inter-generational support and the theory of planned behaviour. The study finds that: children’s overall willingness to pay for their parents’ smart eldercare is high with exchange motives shouldering with altruistic motives; among them, behavioral attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control affect children’s willingness to pay to varying degrees, while children’s age, occupation, residential status and residential distance from their parents also bear a significant impact. The findings reveal the influencing factors of children’s willingness to pay, which can provide a new solution to the popularization and promotion problems encountered by smart eldercare nowadays, and help to promote the high-quality development of smart eldercare.

In the new era, social work should be integrated into the governance system of the Party and the state to give full play to its social governance effectiveness. Social work, in practice, has become an integral part of the primary-level social governance scene. The theoretical framework of “subjectivity-synergy” regards subjectivity and synergy as the two interrelated dimensions of the professional development of social work in the primary-level social governance scene. An analysis from the above-mentioned theoretical framework reveals that social work in City D of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) has played an effective role in risk prevention, conflict resolution and social mobilization through professional services and collaborative actions. However, from the perspective of the deep integration of social work into the governance system of the Party and the state, it still faces the practical dilemma of the “double weakening” of subjectivity and synergy. In order to enhance the professionalism of social work in primary-level social governance scenarios, it is necessary to find a way out of the dilemma, actively enhance the subjectivity and synergy of social work, thus promoting the subjectivity and synergy simultaneously. This is not only the target orientation of the professional development of social work in primary-level social governance, but also the inevitable logic of the deep integration of social work into the governance system of the Party and the state, and at the same time, it also provides a direction for thinking about the development of professional social work under the pattern of “big social work”.

STEM education has become an international consensus to cultivate learners’ scientific and technological innovation ability. The landing of UNESCO IISTEM in Shanghai has well affirmed the achievements of STEM education in China and boosted the confidence of the future development of local STEM education. However, for a long time, the practice of STEM education in primary and secondary schools in China has been subject to the problem of teacher shortage due to the joint efforts of the “systemic shortage” caused by the inertia of the development of subject education and the “structural shortage” caused by the unclear outline of human capital. At present, training top innovative talents has become the main theme of education in the new era, and STEM education holds the value fulcrum “based on core literacy and training innovative talents”. The basic group of STEM teachers has been basically established, and the number of STEM teachers has grown based on their own ability transfer. The teaching mode and evaluation research promoted by colleges and universities have promoted the quality improvement of STEM teachers’ ability. With the development of educational AI and its reshaping of all elements of education, the integration of organization, human management and digital intelligence technology will jointly realize the new qualitative development of STEM education. Therefore, the research suggests that we should carry out ecological evaluation of STEM education to boost development planning, construct a competency model to promote the growth of full-time STEM teachers, and build digital resources to explore the dual-teacher (human-machine) model.

As STEM education is the primary arena for scientific exploration and self-discovery, its enhancement and exploitation of its potential are critically important for cultivating scientific and technological reserve force with interdisciplinary literacy and innovation ability. However, it has been observed that while numerous STEM teaching activities involve multiple disciplines, they often focus on isolated skill training or project completion at the operational level, neglecting the cultivation of interdisciplinary thinking skills. This oversight results in students’ struggling to establish organic connections between knowledge from different subjects and their failing to transform from single-discipline perspectives to an interdisciplinary mindset. To address this issue, this paper proposes a forward-looking instructional strategy where the crux lies in deep reflection and distillation of interdisciplinary concepts within STEM practices. By adopting this approach, students can develop a systematic cognitive framework, construct a flexible and efficient multidisciplinary knowledge linkage system, and master the common laws and basic principles that cut across multiple subject areas, thus enhancing the transferability of knowledge and the ability to synthesize. This innovative concept not only enriches and strengthens the pedagogical methods and theoretical underpinnings of STEM education but also provides educators with practical and actionable guidelines for instruction, thus bearing important theoretical significance and practical value.

Education is the core strategy to alleviate the contradiction between new quality productive forces and the supply & demand of talents, while basic education is the indispensable cornerstone for shaping new quality talents. In order to consolidate the cultivation foundation of future new quality talents, the basic education should closely focus on the needs of new quality talents, build a set of efficient mechanisms so as to help students smoothly grow into new quality talents. In this process, the guidance of composite educational goals, the restructuring of interdisciplinary knowledge systems, and the customized strategies provide strong support for STEAM education to empower the cultivation of new talents. In order to meet the multi-dimensional needs of new talents, it is necessary to reconstruct the cultivation mechanism of STEAM education from five key levels: reshaping the core cultivation concept, clarifying the fundamental cultivation goal, strengthening the basic cultivation conditions, formulating the primary cultivation strategy and stabilizing the key cultivation cornerstones. In order to promote STEAM education to better adapt to the development of the digitalization era in the cultivation of new talents, a series of measures should be taken: to ensure the efficient operation of STEAM education, to improve its interdisciplinary knowledge system, to build a space that spans virtual and physical worlds, to improve the STEAM qualifications of teachers, and to build a vibrant new ecology for the cultivation of STEAM talents. The implementation of these measures will strongly promote the innovation and development of STEAM education in cultivating new quality talents, thus contributing to the social progress in the new era.

Practicing ESG development concept is an essential choice for high-quality and sustainable development of enterprises. Based on the data of China’s A-share listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2012 to 2022, this paper empirically examines the impact of ESG performance on the cost of equity capital. The research reveals that ESG performance has a significant negative impact; ESG performance reduces the cost of equity capital by mitigating principal-agent costs and improving the information transparency; the heterogeneity analysis shows that ESG performance of non-state-owned enterprises, those in China’s eastern region, and low-energy-consumption enterprises bears a more significant effect. The study helps to understand the internal logic of enterprises to protect shareholders’ interests by improving ESG performance, which is thus an important inspiration for promoting the construction of ESG system and high-quality development of enterprises in China.

In the current context of the on-going integration of China’s digital economy and real economy, it is of great significance, with an aim to integrate digital and real economies, to explore the relationship between the development of urban digital economy and the high-quality development of enterprises. This paper, based on the structured data, the micro-data and text data, measures the level of digital economy development in Chinese cities; it, by employing the data of China’s A-share listed enterprises on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2011 to 2020, measures enterprise productivity, and further studies the mechanism and impact of the digital economy on the high-quality development of enterprises. The results show that: the development of the digital economy can significantly empower the high-quality development of enterprises, and the conclusion holds true after robustness tests with adopting the instrumental variables approach and replacing the calculation of the high quality development indicator; the results of the mechanism test reflect that the development of the digital economy is conducive to promoting the expansion of the operational scale of enterprises, the enhancement of R&D and innovation capabilities, the upgrading of human capital and the alleviation of financing constraints, thus promoting the high-quality development of enterprises; the promotion effect of digital economy development on enterprise productivity is influenced by regional, industry, and enterprise heterogeneity: enterprises in areas with higher levels of information infrastructure construction, high-tech industries, and enterprises with higher levels of digital transformation are more significantly promoted by the digital economy for high-quality development. The research conclusion expands the scope of micro level research on the effects of the digital economy, thus providing useful references for the Chinese government to optimize digital economy policies and enterprises to formulate high-quality development strategies.

The “Neo-ritual Education” is a theoretical construction at the forefront of contemporary Confucian philosophy that targets to respond to the simplistic rejection of Confucianism since the New Culture Movement, thus building a modern Confucian ethical and political indoctrination theory system. Its basic connotation can be summarized as follows: to make Li (rites) on the basis of Qing (human nature), and take Li (rites) to educate and restrain the civilians. The so-called “Li” refers to the established social norms and their systems; the so-called “Qing” refers not only to “human nature” but also to “real context”, i.e., universally acknowledged human nature and the real context or the lifestyle to which human nature is adapted. This theoretical construction, though it has not yet been fully developed in the doctrine, has a deep philosophical foundation that embraces “Qing-Li Philosophy” or “Qing-Li Confucianism”. It is presented as a multi-level foundation relationship, namely: emotional existentialism → emotional ontology → emotional ethics → Neo-ritual Education. One of the most original ideas of the Neo-ritual Education is the intrinsic correlation between the historical form of Ritual Education and that of the social subjects, thus revealing that the modern Neo-ritual Education features with the “self-education” of the citizens.

The responsibility gap, upon its introduction, has triggered an extensive and heated moral debate in the academia, which mainly includes three major positions: affirmation, denial and resolutionism. This debate is closely related to the duality of AI technology and the complexity of the concept of responsibility. On the one hand, the dual characteristics of AI as both a self-subject and a technological tool determine that both human self-subjects and AI have a causal relationship with machine behaviors, and both can be regarded as the perpetrators of machine behaviors. On the other hand, moral responsibility often means very different but somewhat logically connected meanings in different contexts. The development of AI has created a separation of different types of responsibility attribution, as well as a tear in its attribution of certain responsibilities. However, in terms of the chain of responsibility of artificial intelligence, the chain is always complete and there is no so-called responsibility gap.