With Chinese civilization as the cornerstone, i.e. the cultural foundation and impetus, to shape tangible, perceptive and effective traits has become not only the direction but also the approach for forging a strong sense of community for Chinese nation, in addition to an inherent requirement and strategic consideration for advancing the building of a community for the Chinese nation in the new era. Nurtured by Chinese civilization, the building of the national image becomes “tangible”; cultivated by Chinese civilization, the cultural identity becomes “perceptible”; enlightened by Chinese civilization, the sense of community for the Chinese nation converts from spontaneous to voluntarily “receptive”. Such a progression tells the internal mechanism operating at the psychological perspective of cognition, emotion, value and behavior as it is concerned with factors ranging from external form to internal perception, and then to overall evident effectiveness. In other words, “tangible” can be achieved through extending and shaping the Chinese national image, “perceptive” through stimulating and enhancing the cohesion of the Chinese nation, and “receptive” through implementing and solidifying the Party’s ethnic affairs, thus subtly integrating the forging a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation into the hearts of people of all ethnic groups which in turn translates into their conscious actions for advancing the building of a community for the Chinese nation.

Digital technology, as the core driving force of the new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation, has been profoundly changing social production methods and human lifestyles. However, the robust growth of digital technology is also haunted by a series of deep-seated contradictions and challenges. Viewed from the Marxist view of technology and society, three major concerns come out: the collusion between technological logic and capital logic, the structural imbalance between the leap in productivity and distribution mechanisms, and the value paradox between technical rationality and social rationality. In the context of the Digital China strategy, to address such concerns, we should reshape the subjectivity of laborers to achieve labor liberation, institutionalize the socialist ethics to enhance technological governance, and to employ the concept of a community with a shared future for mankind to promote global digital technology cooperation, thus achieving a shift in technological objectives from “efficiency-driven” to “human liberation”. The proposal of the Digital China strategy not only provides theoretical support for the development of digital technology in China but also contributes Chinese wisdom and solutions to promoting global digital technology cooperation and building a digital community with a shared future for mankind.

Herbert Marcuse, a leading figure in Western Marxism, developed a series of mature and profound theoretical explorations on the technological dimension of advanced industrial society in North America. From the implicit thread of his thought, he believes that the essence of the technological problem in advanced industrial society lies in the suppression of technological rationality. Following the path of Max Weber, and within the tradition of the Frankfurt School’s critical theory, Marcuse elaborates on the alienated forms and impacts of technological rationality and points out that generating a new technological rationality requires breaking through the current paradigm of technological application; he emphasizes the employing of new technologies to shape new sensibilities and new rationalities. In terms of practical pathways, the current analysis of Marcuse’s technological emancipation path remains more focused on normative prescriptions (what ought to be) rather than empirical examinations of its actual implementation (what is). This paper argues that Marcuse emphasizes the need to reconstruct the technological production process through intervention and revolution, and achieve the integration of labor and leisure time. When the path of realistic revolution in the United States was blocked, he emphasized that social groups should intervene and transform aggressive and domineering technologies. This shift in thought also marks that his critical theory of technology gradually embraces a utopian direction. Theory must conform to the trends of the times, serve reality, and integrate with social development. A review of Marcuse’s critical theory of technology helps us better view and reflect on the new technologies that have emerged in line with the Fourth Industrial Revolution over the past decade. The challenge we face lies in how to maximize benefits and mitigate harms in the process of building a modernized powerhouse, thus minimizing the pains of technological development. On the one hand, it is necessary to have a thorough insight into the gains and losses of Western technology and critical theories of technology, further draw lessons and appreciate their theoretical insights. On the other hand, it is essential to construct a critical theory of technology with Chinese characteristics, rooted in Chinese civilization and the realities of Chinese society, continuously addressing technological issues in practice.

The space constructed by intelligent platforms serve several functions as follows: it enables the subject to act while bypassing the gaze of the Other; it provides the subject with effective answers that respond to the Real of the Other’s desire (symbolic order); it assists and accelerates the subject’s construction of a series of fantasy frameworks that transform jouissance into surplus-jouissance. Consequently, the subject acquires, without the interference of the Other, a “comfort zone” within such space. The subject thus individually enjoys surplus-jouissance within a personal virtual space, leading to the further proliferation of narcissism within society. However, within this vicious cycle of currency and jouissance constructed by intelligent platforms, the subject will ultimately decline amidst the increasingly depleted desire of the pseudo-Other, and thereby ultimately loses him/herself. If the subject wants to extricate him/herself from the replicable jouissance and pleasure offered by intelligent platforms, he/she must awaken from the temptation of escaping the Other, confront the real Other with an open attitude and at length overcomes such temptation.

From the perspective of administrative adaptability, the bureaucratization of village-level governance results from township governments’ active adopting a series of administrative strategies to adapt to changes in their organizational environment. Facing increasingly dense primary-level governance affairs and growing administrative assessments, township governments have strong incentives to extend the administrative chain downward. In D Town, South China, the township government not only promoted the professionalization of village cadres by implementing organizational personnel intentions and setting unified salary standards but also strengthened institutional constraints on village heads by regulating the use of collective funds. In transferring numerous administrative tasks downward, the township government ultimately transformed administrative villages into solid bureaucratic entities within primary-level governance. The main consequences of this bureaucratization include the rapid contraction of village-level governance autonomy and profound challenges to the development of primary-level governance capacity. If village-level governance retains a certain degree of autonomy, the utilization of village governance resources can be closely integrated with the construction of publicness in social governance, allowing significant room for reshaping primary-level governance capacity. Otherwise, it may lead to the failure of village-level governance.

This study based on the Government Authority and Functional Capacity theory, with the 14 selected township cases as the subjects, constructs an evaluation framework for township strengthening reform performance and simultaneously employs the fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). The study finds that “demand responsiveness” is a necessary condition for achieving high reform performance; “administrative service capacity” is a sufficient, but not necessary condition that promotes performance; while “public supervision and evaluation participation” bears a limited effect. Among the explanatory paths combining “authority” and “capacity” conditions, two typical paths are identified. Given the conditional variables and combination paths, delegating authority and empowering townships, along with multiple measures, are necessary choices for achieving reform performance: effectively “delegating” authority in terms of content, methods, and monitoring; and well-designing “empowerment” in fiscal capacity, personnel management, administrative service capacity, comprehensive law enforcement, and demand responsiveness. This can be achieved by improving fiscal transfer payments, developing industries, enhancing training, and optimizing resource allocation to boost townships’ capacity to undertake authority and manage daily affairs.

The complexity, diversity, and dynamism of contradictions generate tensions that bring a series of unexpected consequences to organizations, revealing the intricate nature of organizational operations. Existing studies on the consequences of tensions in farmers’ organizations often treat organizations as unified and homogeneous structures, overlooking the interaction mechanisms across different levels, such as the external institutional environment and internal actors. Drawing on the theoretical perspective of the organizational hierarchical model and grounded in the practical context of farmers’ organization in China, this paper categorizes the consequences of tensions into three dimensions: density, sustainability, and institutional environment.The study finds that the consequences of organizational tensions among farmers exhibit multiple contradictions, including “over-density versus under-density,” “sustainability versus temporality,” and “convergence versus diversity.” Specifically, organizations demonstrate high input density but low output density, rapid growth in quantity but insufficient improvement in quality. Farmers’ participation in organizational activities and benefit acquisition processes show both sustainable and time-specific characteristics. Moreover, organizational functions and structures tend to converge, while organizational types and outcomes display diversified deviations.The findings suggest that tensions should be recognized as inherent attributes of organizational processes. On this basis, farmers’organizations need to strengthen their capacity to accommodate and adapt to the consequences of such tensions, thereby achieving dynamic balance and sustainable development.

Rural social transformation and the transition of primary-level social governance provide policy legitimacy and professional autonomy space for rural social work. The “Institution-Life” perspective offers a suitable theoretical lens for examining its development. An analysis of the current rural social work development within a two-dimensional framework of institutional administrative constraints and life-oriented service agency reveals that it has undergone four developmental types: the “Localized Service” strategy, the “Autonomous Detour” strategy, the “Suspended Rural” strategy, and the “Laissez-faire Stagnation” strategy. Under the significant tension between administrativeization and life-orientation, rural social work development faces dual predicaments from both institutions and daily life, manifesting as the dual paradoxes of a “resource trap” and a “service dilemma”. To transcend these paradoxes, it is necessary to integrate life considerations into the implementation of institutions, optimize institutions through professional life practices, and ultimately return to the life-oriented purpose of serving the people.

The influence of digital media on rural life has reconfigured rural social relations; media practices have significantly impacted the rural middle-aged migrant population and their lives, gradually changing villagers’ daily lifestyles. Guided by media practice theory, this paper conducts participatory observation on the media practices of the middle-aged migrant population in L Village, Gansu Province. It analyzes the process through which this group constructs a mediatized rural society and extracts the mechanisms of interaction between media logic and rural social structures that enable the reconfiguration of rural society. The research finds that the media practices of this group can be categorized into three types: private-domain structural, public-domain transactional, and semi-gaze co-constructive. Through these multi-layered practices, the middle-aged migrant population reconfigures the mediatized rural world via an interactive mechanism involving “ritual systems-differential spatiotemporal & imagined communities-bidirectional co-construction-concrete bridging”. It is suggested to further accelerate the development of digital villages to provide foundational conditions for mediatized rural areas, thereby better addressing village “hollowing-out” and achieving the comprehensive revitalization of both people and rural areas.

As the robust growth of artificial intelligence (AI) has impacted all fields of human production and life, there is an inevitable trend to leverage, the reform of education for sustainable development(ESD). The logic of AI-empowered reform of ESD unfolds through the following dimensions: shaping a smart teaching model featured by multi-modal interaction, constructing a smart learning environment that achieves the virtual and real-world interactions, generating personalized and customized learning content, and building a panoramic assessment mechanism that focuses on cultivating individuals’ capacities for sustainable development. Yet three latent challenges arise in this transformative process: the alienation of humanistic values in sustainability education driven by techno-utopian ideologies, the fragmentation of impact resulting from decentralized initiatives, and the erosion of equity in educational practices due to algorithmic biases. To address these challenges, it is imperative to strengthen institutional foundations through cross-sector governance, co-design actionable pathways via multi-stakeholder collaboration, prioritize critical bottlenecks in implementation, and embed fairness and inclusiveness as core principles, thus ensuring the overall quality and effectiveness of ESD.

In the digital age, big data, block-chain, generative artificial intelligence, for its enjoying scientific, personalized and precise advantages, has brought new development opportunities for education reform on one hand, and triggered deeper risks on the other. These risks are mainly manifested by the facts that the digital divide increases the educational injustice, that the digital impact threatens the information security, that the digital survival inhibits the overall development, and that the digital discipline causes the subjectivity crisis. Such characteristics as trans-temporal, indirect and anonymous, make the identity of each subject overlapped and thus difficult to be transformed. To be more specific, everyone is responsible but no one takes responsibility, and the blurred boundary is an important issue ignored in risk management. With such unpredictable potential risks, the constraints of responsibility ethics are more flexible, so that the action subjects can take the initiative to deal with the risks of educational reform by virtue of the conscious construction of “subject responsibility”. Therefore, to avoid, from the perspective of responsibility ethics, the risk of educational reform in the digital age, we should fulfill the forward-looking responsibility and bridge the digital divide, take formal responsibility to ensure digital security, strengthen contractual responsibility and implement students’ all-round development, improve the natural responsibility, and strengthen the subject consciousness.

City serves as a key hub for cultivating new quality productive forces and advancing Chinese modernization and its social functions run well if it draws forces from the innovative resources and talent support from universities. Universities and cities, based on their unique and rich innovative genes, maintain balance and development amid dynamic changes, forming an organic ecosystem with mutual feedback. From the perspective of the organizational ecology theory, the sustainable development of universities and cities is a process of holistic evolution, resource sharing, and mutualistic symbiosis among organic entities within an innovation ecosystem. In addressing issues such as limited interactive freedom, uncertainty in cooperation risks, and the over-reliance on indicator-based governance models during the integration of universities and cities for innovation, universities should optimize innovation organizational mechanisms to promote urban upgrading and development, and gather powerful momentum for industrial transformation and upgrading, thus advancing the co-creation of value for the sustainable development of both sides. The sustainable development of universities and cities should be achieved through strategies such as cultivating high-quality ecological organizations, shaping loosely-coupled innovation communities, and establishing a contractual framework for sound governance, thus collaboratively building a resilient, inclusive, and digitally empowered organizational ecosystem.

Advances in artificial intelligence technology and its applications has triggered an intelligent revolution, driving the emergence and development of the intelligent economy which in turn brings challenges to traditional economic theories and modern economics. With such a context, the development of the intelligent economy necessitates the construction of an autonomous knowledge system based on AI economics. Within the context of the intelligent revolution, data, computing power, and algorithms are the core elements of AI economics. Its techno-economic characteristics reflect the deep learning capability, the possibility of cross-border integration, the human-machine collaborative work mode, the penetrative and synergistic effects on the economy, and the potential for innovation. Its research scope embraces the impacts of AI technology on economic activities, economic value, labor market, economic growth, social welfare etc. The research methods primarily include experimental studies, case analyses, and mathematical modeling. The theoretical framework spans five levels: AI and microeconomics, AI and mesoeconomics, AI and macroeconomics, governance of the AI economy, and the future of the AI economy and AI economics. The research topics cover multiple aspects such as the impact of AI on economic growth and development, market size prediction, industrial productivity enhancement, employment shifts, innovative financial models, economies of scale effects, the importance of venture capital, and the meta-task framework. AI economics finds applications in areas such as predictive and decision-making support, automation and labor substitution, personalized recommendations and pricing, financial markets and investments, and social welfare and public policy.

A new theoretical model of optimal innovation decision for enterprises is constructed from the perspective of enterprise value fluctuation theory, based on a stochastic dynamic programming model. Data from A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets are collected to conduct an empirical testing with fixed effect model. The theoretical and empirical results show that: easing monetary policy promotes enterprise innovation; high regional economic policy uncertainty inhibits enterprise innovation, and loose monetary policy can mitigate this effect. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that state-owned enterprises are more stable in innovation input under uncertain environment, and firms with a senior management team rich in R&D and technical expertise better adapt to environmental changes and adjust their innovation behaviors. To strengthen enterprise innovation motivation, financial measures such as lowering market interest rates and expanding money supply should be flexibly combined and adjusted to optimize the corporate financing environment. Local governments should closely align with the direction of central monetary policy when formulating regional economic policies, thus building a stable, transparent, and predictable innovation support system. Enterprises of different ownership types should develop differentiated innovation strategies based on their unique characteristics to fully leverage their advantages and overcome external challenges. When forming senior management teams, enterprises should prioritize candidates with strong technical backgrounds so as to enhance their acuity and responsiveness to market changes and risks.

Under the “triple pressures”, how to shape enterprises’ innovation capability in a dynamic and complex environment and continuously drive the development of new quality productive forces through technological innovation has been a major concern urgently requiring research and explanation. This study, by employing national innovation survey data selected from above-scale enterprises, and based on characterizing the “triple pressures”, explores and conducts enterprise innovation resilience testing. Using the fsQCA method, it examines what policy combinations help alleviate enterprise innovation pressure from the perspectives of micro-level tax policies and macro-level directional policies. The research finds that the evolution trend of China’s enterprise innovation resilience index is generally stable and exhibits spatial correlation characteristics. At the micro level, the combination of super-deduction tax incentives for enterprise R&D expenses, coupled with income tax reductions for high-tech enterprises, is the core policy mix for enhancing enterprise innovation resilience. At the macro level, a policy configuration with intellectual property creation and protection policies as the core condition, complemented by supportive policies such as financial support and transformation of scientific and technological achievements as peripheral conditions, is also an important guarantee for generating a high enterprise innovation resilience index.

Based on the dynamic capability theory in the context of the digital economy and coupled with the fsQCA method, this study analyzes the relationship between digital transformation and green innovation efficiency with data from 102 manufacturing enterprises. The research finds that: (1) None of the antecedent conditions constitute a necessary condition for high green innovation efficiency, yet leadership-driven digital transformation plays a universal role in enhancing green innovation efficiency. (2) Two configurational fits of enterprise digital transformation can lead to high green innovation efficiency: the internal incentive-driven type, with leadership digital transformation and human resource digital transformation as core conditions, and the external perception-driven type, with business scenario digital transformation, strategic digital transformation, and leadership-driven digital transformation as core conditions. (3) Among the five digital transformation configurations leading to non-high green innovation efficiency, the absence of even one core condition results in failure to achieve high green innovation efficiency, further verifying that improving green innovation efficiency requires the synergistic effect of multidimensional digital transformations.Enterprises should emphasize cultivating managerial traits such as digital agility, digital transformation awareness, and digital strategic perception among management during the digital transformation process. Enterprises should prioritize diversifying the functional backgrounds of board members, optimize board composition, and develop more inclusive digital strategic decisions. Enterprises should rationally analyze the reasons for the failure of digital empowerment in green innovation and avoid simplistically attributing failure causes as success factors.

Civilization is the product of historical processes and the result of human production and life. Archaeology, with its unique temporal scale and study of material remains, provides a distinctive perspective for exploring the origins of the characteristics of Chinese civilization. As Chinese civilization originated in the prehistoric period rather than the historical period, an insight into its characteristics requires our tracing back to prehistoric times. From the evidence of prehistoric archaeology, the origins of the characteristics of Chinese civilization experienced three stages: the Paleolithic era, the stage of agricultural origins, and the emergence of civilization. Among these, the origins of agriculture around 10,000 years ago were particularly significant, as agriculture represented the advanced productive force of that era, and the influence of Chinese civilization throughout history is rooted in its developed agricultural production. The characteristics of the origins of prehistoric Chinese agriculture, including its dual-origin centers and self-sufficient economic model, played a crucial role in shaping the fundamental traits of Chinese civilization. The process of civilization, built upon an agricultural social foundation, continued the cultural patterns established by the origins of agriculture and further promoted the initial formation of the distinctive characteristics of Chinese civilization.

The formation of the cultural symbol “Natural Selection, Survival of the Fittest” underwent a process embedded in complex historical contexts. To reveal the historical truth, it is essential to sift through the multiple messages conveyed in Yan Fu’s Tianyan Lun. Yan Fu’s interpretation unfolded in two ways: one was to elaborate on the theoretical logic adopted by the author (Thomas Huxley or Herbert Spencer), while the other was to deduce the principle of the law of the jungle for Chinese audiences after the First Sino-Japanese War (1894—1895), leveraging his own background in Chinese culture. This shows how Yan Fu ingeniously condensed these ideas into “Natural Selection, Survival of the Fittest” and continuously reinterpreted them in historical contexts. Based on his translation theory of “faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance”, Yan Fu selected different linguistic rhetorics and repeatedly revised discursive expressions to convey his ideas, drawing on both Western cultural classics and local social experiences. This practice clearly reflected his formed value judgments: who the readers were and how to interpret Western cultural classics. As a new ideology in modern Chinese society, the theory of evolution was embodied in the text of Tianyan Lun, where textual and social contexts interpenetrated and interpreted each other, demonstrating an obvious translation between academic theories and historical events. In this sense, Yan Fu’s translated version of the theory constructed a new knowledge genealogy of the doctrine of the struggle for existence.