In recent years, academia has increasingly emphasized Max Stirner’s role in Karl Marx’s intellectual development, giving rise to a tendency to overstate his influence—dubbed the “Stirner Impact”. This view posits that Stirner’s critique forms the original thesis of The German Ideology and inspires Marx to transcend Ludwig Feuerbach, culminating in the creation of historical materialism. However, based on the manuscript history of The German Ideology, the text H^5a (predating H¹¹, the critique of Stirner) represents the earliest expression of historical materialism. Marx never identified Stirner as a primary antagonist after publishing The Holy Family, nor could he had commenced writing H¹¹ prior to the release of Volume 3 of the Wigands Vierteljahrsschrift. Thus, the original thesis of The German Ideology cannot be attributed to Stirner’s critique. Regarding the central thesis of The German Ideology, i.e. the establishment of historical materialism, Marx’s pivotal breakthrough in transcending Feuerbach owes more to Hess than to Stirner. Furthermore, Hess also guided Marx in critiquing Stirner by surpassing his own framework. If there is one who impacts or rather enlightens Marx, it was Hess. Rejecting the “Stirner Impact” narrative does not negate Stirner’s role; Marx’s historical materialism evolved organically, with Stirner’s significance lying in his nihilistic rejection of all universality—a critical foil for Marx’s defense of communism’s value dimension. A critical exam of the “Stirner Impact” clarifies Marx’s relationship with the Young Hegelians and scientifically reconstructs the philosophical revolution underlying the creation of historical materialism.

A close survey of socio-economic production under specific historical conditions is essential for grounding historical materialism scientifically. The “Gülich Notes” provides rich historical context and bibliographic support for The Communist Manifesto, laying a solid political economy foundation for scientific socialism’s birth. In addition. the notes also open new theoretical avenues for Marx and Engels to deepen historical materialism. In The Communist Manifesto, the notes apply historical materialism to analyze bourgeois society, capitalist modes of production, and class struggle, proclaiming scientific socialism’s birth. This work further initiates their exploration of historical materialism’s refinement.

As a critical component of primary-level social governance, older residential communities face challenges such as mismanagement, abandonment, and property disputes. Following the dissolution of the unit-system housing governance, property management shifted from administrative control to market-based contracts, with service agreements defining management responsibilities. However, current contractual governance mechanisms neglect the internal social networks, traditional values, and contextual complexities of older communities, failing to effectively address their governance needs. This study argues for reintegrating relational elements into contractual governance. Using Chengdu’s trust-based property management as a case, it analyzes the dynamics of relational and contractual governance, emphasizing alignment with governance contexts to reduce transaction risks and costs, thereby enhancing the efficacy of primary-level social governance.

Grid-based community workers serve as street-level bureaucrats within community spaces. By revealing how the spatial characteristics of communities influence the behavioral logic of grid members and the modernization of governance, this study contributes new research perspectives and empirical frameworks to the study of street-level bureaucrats and governance modernization. Compared with rural community spaces, urban community spaces are characterized by ambiguity, boundary formation, privacy, and embeddedness. These spatial features prevent grid-based community workers—who share the role of street-level bureaucrats—from adopting a one-dimensional bureaucratic logic, that is, “deceiving superiors and concealing from subordinates”. Instead, their behavior manifests as a dual strategy of “deluding superiors while respecting subordinates”. Simultaneously, the irregularities of urban community spaces render grid-based management, often framed as a path to technological governance modernization, prone to asynchronous dilemmas in technological governance, thus a failure in community governance. Therefore, tone-dimensional technological governance modernization approaches should be adopted with prudence. Furthermore, the intrinsic reflexivity within the characteristics of community spaces determines why community governance fails. To achieve effective governance, it is essential to strengthen foundational governance capabilities, particularly those related to mass work (community engagement), as this will facilitate the advancement of community governance modernization.

Party-building guidance is vital for enhancing community governance efficacy. Existing studies on the mechanisms of Party-building guidance tend to the proactive role of Party organizations while under-exploring the spatial dimensions of Party-building practices. Community governance inherently bears spatial attributes, and the interplay between Party-building guidance and the spatiality of community governance gives rise to “spatialized guidance”—a novel practical paradigm. Through an in-depth analysis of the construction of the CPC Service Center for the public in three typical communities in District D, this study reveals that Party organizations comprehensively steer spatial production, creating community spaces characterized by people-centered design, functional pragmatism, and public-oriented value expression. These spaces serve as mediums to strengthen Party-masses emotional bonds, generate efficient service scenarios, and shape communal norms, thereby realizing spatialized guidance. This approach has delivered significant governance outcomes: consolidating primary-level public support for the Party, enhancing community governance capacity, broadening social participation, and gradually forming a multi-stakeholder collaborative governance framework. Therefore, spatialized guidance represents a major institutional and conceptual innovation in Party-building practices, offering profound implications for advancing community governance modernization.

The human-machine symbiosis in smart education is characterized by human-machine collaboration and co-creation. Its intelligent pedagogical modalities embrace human-machine co-teaching, co-learning, and co-integration. The mechanisms through which human-machine symbiosis enhances learners’ capabilities are manifested as follows: From the perspective of learners’ internal cognitive processes, the transition from information acquisition to practical output constitutes an effective cognitive process; Diversified practical outputs provide the foundation for multimodal data analysis, enabling precise evaluation of learners’ levels and states; Organizing classroom instruction with the value orientation of promoting learners’ abilities facilitates the implementation of teaching activities such as role-playing and group negotiation, thereby advancing learners’ knowledge and skills; Multimodal learning approaches combining human-machine co-teaching, co-learning, and co-integration broaden learners’ cognitive breadth, deepen their cognitive depth, and foster the development of learning capabilities. The pathways for intelligent technologies to empower smart education include: Diversifying teaching methods to create “smart + teaching”; expanding learning resources to build “smart + resources”; emphasizing personalized learning to achieve “smart + learning”; and systematizing classroom management to advance “smart + management”. The application of human-machine symbiosis in smart education should leverage “intelligence” to facilitate teaching (creating intelligent classroom environments), promote learning (strengthening intelligent learning methods), and enable pedagogical innovation (constructing intelligent teaching models). Human-machine symbiosis in smart education holds significant importance for driving educational innovation and achieving high-quality development in smart teaching, which aligns with trends in educational technology and future educational demands.

Virtual teaching-research section, as one critical component of higher education pedagogy, represents a significant exploration in building new primary-level teaching organizations in the information age, and also serves as essential platform for universities to integrate information technologies, enhance pedagogical innovation, implement future-oriented teaching practices, and advance the digital transformation of higher education. To fulfill the mission of normal universities, i.e. cultivating educators for an education power, an all-around aid from virtual teaching-research sections is essential for specialized and innovative new teacher education in terms of pedagogical organization, technology integration, and model innovation. The digital space of virtual teaching-research sections in new pedagogical education model should embrace three interconnected dimensions: “cognitive and meaning construction”, “social interaction and communication”, and “pedagogical reflection and practice”, collectively forming a virtual pedagogical research community characterized by intelligent and collaborative learning. Well operated virtual teaching-research sections rely on the establishment of efficient management mechanisms, operational frameworks, and activity systems to stimulate members’ intrinsic motivation (“inner drive”) and sense of belonging (“presence”). Digital platforms supporting collaborative pedagogy are prerequisites for fostering social connectivity within virtual teaching-research communities, while virtual-real integrated course clusters serve as practical carriers for systematically advancing the digital transformation of new teacher education pedagogy. As key practice fields for university digitalization, virtual teaching-research sections present a new paradigm of primary-level pedagogical innovation empowered by digital technologies. However, challenges persist in their development: (1) ensuring member engagement cohesion; (2) addressing the lack of appropriate intelligent pedagogical activity platforms; (3) advancing from virtual to wisdom-driven pedagogical research; (4) aligning the universal goals of virtual teaching-research offices with the distinctive developmental needs of new teacher education.

The construction and application of digital textbooks constitute a critical phase in the digital transformation of education and a key lever for advancing high-quality education development and fulfilling the moral education mission. Based on ISM (Interpretive Structural Modeling) analysis, this study identifies four interdependent factors driving digital textbooks’ role in high-quality education: generative drivers (policy guidance and individual needs), operational environments (classroom climate and teaching content), instructional implementation, and service management. Hierarchical analysis reveals a layered structure: foundational elements (policy and individual needs) underpin intermediate objectives (classroom climate and teaching content), forming a hierarchical configuration of “initial drivers → process advancement → outcome realization”. Drawing on these findings, this study proposes three imperatives for digital textbooks to empower high-quality education: (1) adopting a learner-centered design philosophy, (2) strengthening technical infrastructure to ensure classroom effectiveness, and (3) refining management mechanisms to promote institutional development. This framework addresses the theme of “how digital textbooks empower high-quality education development”, offering novel insights for enhancing pedagogical quality while advancing the fundamental mission of moral education through digital textbooks’ pedagogical functions.

This study, based on the data from the 14^th Chinese Private Enterprise Survey, investigates the impact of digital transformation on the scale and expectations of new private investments and its mechanisms. The findings reveal that digital transformation significantly promotes the scale and expectations of new investments in private enterprises. These conclusions remain valid after a series of robustness checks. Mechanism analysis indicates that digital transformation drives new investments internally by enhancing entrepreneurs’ confidence and opportunity awareness, while externally by reducing institutional transaction costs and alleviating repayment pressures. Heterogeneity tests demonstrate stronger effects among larger, mature firms outside national big data pilot zones and non-core technology industries. Performance tests confirm that digital transformation drives revenue growth through new investments. The results provide policy support and empirical evidence for governments to activate private investment in the digital economy era.

In the digital economy era, how executives’ cognition drives business model innovation to achieve value-added products and services remains both a theoretical and practical challenge. This study, using 2022 ChiNext data from listed companies, empirically examines the issue through the lenses of Upper Echelons Theory and Dynamic Capabilities Theory. The findings reveal that: (1) Executives’ digital economy cognition level and cognitive uniqueness bear significantly positive influence on business model innovation; (2) Dynamic capabilities fully mediate the relationship between executives’ cognition level and business model innovation, while partially mediating the link between cognitive uniqueness and innovation; (3) Regional digitalization levels positively moderate the relationships between executives’ cognition level, cognitive uniqueness, and dynamic capabilities. These results elucidate the nature and patterns of business model innovation from cognitive and capability perspectives. To innovate business models in the digital economy context, effective measures should be adopted: At the firm level, we should enhance executives’ awareness and belief systems regarding business model innovation; at the governmental level, we should strengthen digital infrastructure construction and formulate scientific, forward-looking digital economy policies in an attempt to improve regional digitalization levels.

In the construction of “digital China”, security has gradually become a critical safeguard for advancing the digital economy. Using the provincial panel data from 2011 to 2021, this study constructs a digital economy security index for China; employing the geometric mean of the entropy weight-coefficient of variation method, it measures the level of digital economy security; through Dagum Gini coefficients, Kernel density estimation, and spatial Markov chains, the study systematically examines the development level and dynamic evolution mechanisms of China’s digital economy security. The findings reveal: (1) Among the five dimensions—infrastructure development, factor circulation environment, economic resilience, green low-carbon development, and risk monitoring—the green low-carbon development index consistently maintains a high level, showing a fluctuating upward trend, and its risk monitoring index remains the lowest; (2) China’s overall digital economy security level exhibits a “steady rise-fluctuating decline” trend, with eastern regions outperforming the national average and central/western regions, and significant disparities existing among regional security levels; (3) China’s digital economy security development demonstrates relative stability, with a low probability of cross-level transitions between consecutive years. These results highlight regional disparities and evolutionary trends in China’s digital economy security. To promote high-quality regional economic development and enhance digital economy security, effective measures should be adopted: improving the digital economy security system and optimizing the data factor circulation environment; establishing interconnected digital security frameworks to narrow regional developmental gaps; and leveraging spatial spillover effects to strengthen regional risk monitoring.

The “oracle bone inscriptions” unearthed at Shang Capital ruins (Zhengzhou) and the cinnabar-inscribed pottery texts from Xiaoshuangqiao site confirm that the early Shang period witnessed an age with mature writing. The pottery inscriptions excavated from the Erlitou site in Yanshi, Henan, show a clear developmental connection with similar scripts from the Yinxu ruins, indicating an evident hereditary relationship between Erlitou writing and Shang Dynasty scripts. Comparative archaeological typological studies reveal that Shang writing embraces elements of Xia ritual systems and clan emblem scripts, reflecting not only the inheritance of ritual culture but also the continuity of a textual memory system. The emergence of large urban settlements in Erlitou culture marks the highly developed socio-economy of the Xia Dynasty, signifying the formation of a state and its entry into the era of civilization. The mutual corroboration among Erlitou pottery inscriptions, Yinxu oracle bones, and transmitted texts further confirms the existence of Xia written records. Although some archival documents may have been altered or lost during transmission, the authenticity of their core content remains undeniable. Archaeology and textual records jointly construct an evolutionary sequence of “Xia writing-Early Shang writing-Yinxu oracle bone inscriptions (bronze inscriptions)”. The scarcity of unearthed Xia cultural texts may be attributed to the perishable nature of writing materials (such as bamboo slips), yet both archaeological findings and documented evidence collectively prove that the Xia Dynasty indeed witnessed an age of writing.