Humans constitute the most dynamic factor and the most decisive force in society. Promoting all-round human development has always been a central objective of Marxism, as well as a process of China’s socialist practice. In the new era, investing in people represents a strategic initiative to respond to domestic and international changes, adapt to the need for developing new quality productive forces in line with local conditions, expand domestic demand, and propel high-quality economic and social development. During the 15th Five-Year Plan period and beyond, it is essential to promptly shift outdated perceptions that hinder investment in people, accelerate efforts to address shortcomings in this regard, balance various relationships, and focus on planning in three key areas: building a strong nation in terms of people’s livelihoods, cultural prosperity, and a skilled talent workforce. The goal is to establish a sound ecological system that fosters investment in people and effective human resource utilization, thereby generating strong endogenous momentum for advancing Chinese modernization and accelerating the realization of all-round human development.

Total factor productivity (TFP) serves as the core engine of sustained and stable economic growth and a key factor in transitioning China’s economy toward high-quality development. Although TFP is a common concept in Western economics, the intellectual origins embedded in Marx’s theory of labor productivity provide a theoretical foundation for understanding its stage-specific characteristics and contemporary implications from a political economy perspective. The significant enhancement of TFP is a central marker of new quality productive forces, whose internal mechanisms are reflected in disruptive technological innovation, innovative allocation of factors, and industrial transformation and upgrading—continuously expanding production boundaries, enhancing efficiency, and optimizing production structures. Therefore, improving TFP requires giving full play to the advantages of the new national system to achieve breakthroughs in key technologies, accelerating the development of a unified national market to facilitate the smooth flow of advanced production factors, and deepening the integration of digital and real economies to modernize the industrial system—thereby accelerating the formation and development of new quality productive forces.

The organic coupling between new quality productive forces and ecological labor constitutes a fundamental dialectical relationship for achieving high-quality development and constructing ecological civilization in the new era. This relationship unfolds through a two-way dynamic: new quality productive forces provide the material and technological foundation as well as objective determinacy for the formation of ecological labor via changes in production factors; in turn, ecological labor exerts value guidance and practical discipline on the developmental trajectory of new quality productive forces through the internalization of ecological values and conscious ethical conduct by subjects. Their coupling is not a simple linear addition but a synergistic evolution characterized by mutual empowerment, driven by intrinsic needs and value consensus, and manifested as a spiral-shaped upward movement. The ultimate significance of this coupling lies in its profound shaping effect on civilization: it establishes a realistic foundation for overcoming the practical dilemmas of the traditional “ecological man” concept and molding a new type of “wise ecological man” as the subject; it provides core support in terms of production and lifestyle for the green transformation of Chinese modernization; and it offers a Chinese solution with universal implications for humanity to transcend the predicaments of industrial civilization and advance toward a new form of ecological civilization aimed at harmonious coexistence between humans and nature.

Traditional biopolitical theory reveals how power disciplines and controls life, yet it faces significant limitations in interpreting contemporary capitalist society: it tends to view power as a monolithic extension and becomes trapped in an “oppression-resistance” binary framework, thereby failing to capture the dialectical contradictions arising from the interplay of multiple forces in biopolitics. In response, the contemporary Western leftist thinker Slavoj Žižek, through his parallax perspective, injects new vitality into biopolitical critique. The concept of “parallax”, a core tool in his philosophical system, is not a simplistic endorsement of multiple perspectives but points fundamentally to an unsymbolizable traumatic core and the inherent split in reality itself. Biopolitical critique from a parallax perspective is not confined to a unidimensional view of power but expands into a three-dimensional analysis encompassing power, the subject, and capital. It reveals the contradictions and splits within reality: how power inherently contains a dimension of violence, why the subject exhibits a contradictory relationship of both alienation from and dependence on power, and how capital subsumes the life process under its logic of domination under the guise of neutrality. This parallax-based interpretation not only delves into the complex operational mechanisms of capitalist biopolitics and exposes how it conceals its structural antagonisms to sustain its own reproduction, but also, by revealing its internal contradictions, excavating the potential for subjective resistance, and deconstructing ideological disguises, provides new theoretical tools and critical pathways for critiquing and resisting capitalism.

Social relations, as relatively stable patterns of interaction built upon social connections, have evolved in the digital era under the joint influence of technological innovation, economic transformation, political restructuring, and changes in everyday life. These new social relations are characterized by fluid connectivity, online-offline interaction, platform mediation, and hybrid complexity. While profoundly reshaping traditional interactive logic, they also generate contingent risks such as the erosion of political ecosystems by algorithmic power, the alienation of labor value by platform capital, the weakening of social integration due to transient connections, and the colonization of human cognition by technical rationality. These challenges trap digital civilization in a modern predicament of “high connectivity yet low sense of belonging”. In response, this study proposes a multi-dimensional governance framework encompassing institutional, technological, social, and cognitive aspects. Key measures include defining data rights and ensuring algorithmic transparency to curb technological hegemony, embedding ethics and promoting open-source ecosystems to steer technology toward good, introducing data dividends and gig worker protections to restore distributive justice, and fostering critical literacy and cognitive sovereignty to uphold human dignity. Together, these efforts form a resilient governance network aimed at redirecting digital technology from disrupting social structures to co-constructing healthy and sustainable social relations.

The application of artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping public administration and poses significant challenges to public governance education. How such education should transform in the AI era demands an urgent response. Based on an impact assessment of AI applications in governance and a comparative analysis of public governance education reforms in typical European and American universities, this study finds that while AI enhances administrative efficiency and supports decision-making, it also brings four major risks: algorithmic black boxes, data security threats, ethical dilemmas, and human replacement. These challenges are disrupting conventional public governance education. Some Western universities have responded by introducing AI-related courses, deepening industry-academia collaboration, and strengthening ethics and critical thinking training. Insights from these reforms, this study enlightens us, suggest that public governance education in the AI era must learn to utilize AI wisely while upholding humanity’s “creative sovereignty” lest AI is reduced to be a tool that dominates rather than serves and humans to passive “technical appendages”. Looking ahead, public governance education should guard against the “erosion of capability” induced by AI. This entails improving students’ AI literacy on the technical front, reinforcing AI ethics and security awareness, and—in the dimension of thinking training—focusing on non-substitutable skills such as innovative thinking, critical analysis, creative problem-solving, and self-directed learning. The goal is to cultivate versatile public governance talent equipped with both AI technical proficiency and the ability to lead innovation.

Information is a foundational element of social structure and a key resource for the exercise of power, constituting a fundamental parameter of public governance and exerting significant influence on governance structures, processes, and technologies. Information asymmetry is a basic phenomenon affecting social interactions and is profoundly impacted by the development and application of artificial intelligence technology. Through large-scale data processing, complex relationship restructuring, and innovative interaction models, AI generates dual effects in public governance. On the one hand, AI enhances the visibility, commensurability, and egalitarian use of information tools, making previously hidden information visible and accessible, transforming specialized information into forms understandable by the public, and turning advanced analytical tools from privileges for the few into public resources. On the other hand, AI drives the evolution of information asymmetry from quantitative disparities to qualitative differentiation, from low-dimensional opposition to high-dimensional fission, and from a deterministic pattern to an uncertain one. These evolutions reveal deep-seated contradictions in public governance in the digital age: the expansion of information sharing does not necessarily lead to equality in information power, the proliferation of AI technology may not bridge gaps in comprehension, and information asymmetry cannot be eliminated but will only manifest in different forms. A thorough analysis of the interaction between AI technology and information asymmetry helps to accurately grasp the evolutionary direction of public governance and provides theoretical insights for constructing a more moderate and balanced governance system.

The intelligent transformation of public services is a significant manifestation of the new round of technological revolution. Existing literature mostly focuses on the level of organizational change, yet it fails to deeply explain the underlying logic of artificial intelligence (AI) driven public service transformation when describing the details. Drawing on the theoretical inspiration of the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and based on the perspective of human-machine relationships in public service transformation, this study constructs an analytical framework for AI-driven public service transformation and examines its impact on service efficiency, service scenarios, and public value. The findings reveal that AI accelerates service innovation through comprehensive improvements in decision-making efficiency, collaborative efficiency, allocation efficiency, and communication efficiency; it also promotes the upgrading of service space by restructuring the elements, representations, atmosphere, and value of scenarios, thereby shaping an entirely new form of public services. However, while creating public value, AI simultaneously exacerbates the risk of value failure in service delivery due to its inherent vulnerabilities in trust, accountability, ethics, and emotional capacity. In response, it is necessary to build a human-machine symbiosis paradigm in interaction and reaffirm and establish the dominant position of humans in AI-empowered public services. Deep human-machine collaboration can thus chart a new path for the modernization of public service development.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) is profoundly transforming the educational ecosystem paradigm. The key lies in its innovating the selection and flow of educational information and reshaping the realm of educational practice. The core values of GAI in empowering teacher development is manifested as enhancing teaching efficiency, meeting teachers’ personalized development needs, and realizing their intrinsic value and social status elevation. Driven by generative AI, teacher development is witnessing opportunities such as the upgrading of teaching paradigms and more accessible resource acquisition. However, it also faces practical challenges, including realistic demands for evolving teacher roles, the need for contemporary updates in talent development philosophies, and the call for diversified approaches in educational assessment. The multi-stakeholder collaborative approach for GAI to empower teacher development embraces: the government building a policy-leading and ecosystem-supporting system, schools promoting scenario implementation and model innovation, teacher groups achieving technological integration and professional role reconstruction, technology research and development adhering to educational principles and ethical constraints, and international cooperation focusing on local concerns and standard alignment.

Moral education thinking returning to a public stance is based on public values and public welfare to understand and grasp the national mission and social responsibilities that moral education ought to undertake. It guides moral education toward the teaching and cultivation of individuals’ public character and sense of public responsibility, as well as toward the exploration and pursuit of public welfare for the nation and society. Returning to a public stance highlights the important demands of moral education in the new era, and it is reflected in its commitment to public space, public values, and the self-transcending nature of the public dimension. To better return to a public stance, moral education should, at the conceptual level, gradually shift from cultivating individual persons to nurturing public-minded individuals; in terms of spatial thinking, greater emphasis should be placed on the integration of physical, social, and cyber spaces, thereby advancing the construction of public spaces for moral education; in curriculum, teaching, and value transmission, the effective communication of socialist core values and common human values should be achieved through a combination of explicit and implicit approaches. Simultaneously, multidimensional public practice activities should be constructed to promote the organic integration of moral education and public practice, thereby better fostering a new generation with public moral character and spirit.

In recent years, inter-subjective teacher-student relationship has been criticized as a form of solipsism. Some scholars, therefore, have proposed reconstructing such it based on the theory of otherness which, however, has fallen into the extreme of “alter-centrism” as it remains a single-subject theory, the same as the inter-subjective teacher-student relationship, thus failing to genuinely transcend the latter. Through an in-depth analysis of otherness-based teacher-student relationship, it becomes evident that research on this topic should focus on the “relationship” itself rather than the “subjects”. Further tracing back to the theory of inter-subjectivity reveals that “intentional relationship” is the origin of teacher-student interactions and it offers a new perspective for interpreting this relationship. To construct a new form of intentional teacher-student relationship, it is essential, first, to build a “shared world” between teachers and students through “intentional relationship”. Second, full attention should be paid to the function of “gaze” in particularizing the object of communication. Finally, reflection should be employed to present the teacher-student relationship, thus maintaining the self-directed nature of “intentionality”.

Corporate environment, society and corporate governance (ESG) serve as important approaches to achieve high-quality development, and also strategic choices to accelerate the response to sustainable development at the micro level, hence indispensable dimensions to measure corporate value under the guidance of sustainable development. Based on the sample data of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock exchanges from 2010 to 2022, this paper analyzes the impact of patient capital on the ESG performance of enterprises. The baseline regression results indicate that the intervention of patient capital significantly improves corporate ESG performance by participating in corporate governance, improving the green cognition level of executives, and enhancing the quality of social responsibility information disclosure. The applicable situations of patient capital to enterprise ESG performance, the study finds, are as follows: patient capital mainly acts on the dimensions of environment and social responsibility, instead of that of governance; relational debt capital is the key force to improve ESG, instead of equity capital and its synergistic effect; patient capital has a significant role in promoting ESG of enterprises in non-growth stage, heavy pollution industries and old industrial areas. This means that patient capital should be invested accurately to environmental and social fields in the form of debt, and targeted to specific types of enterprises and regions. Based on this, specific policy formulation should focus on guiding the directional empowerment of patient capital, improving the green debt financing system, strengthening ESG information disclosure, and implementing regional and industrial differentiated support strategies, so as to effectively strengthen the level of enterprise ESG practice.

As the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy has become a critical direction of the new round of industrial transformation, the role of capital structure in shaping enterprises’ capability to integrate digital and real economy industrial technologies is increasingly prominent. Whether patient capital, as a stable and long-term funding source, can help enterprises break free from short-term incentive constraints and achieve the integration of digital and real economy industrial technologies is a focus of societal attention. Based on data from Chinese A-share listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2010 to 2024, this study empirically analyzes the impact of patient capital on the integration of digital and real economy industrial technologies and its underlying mechanisms. The results show that patient capital significantly enhances the level of this integration, primarily by strengthening capital stability, innovation investment capability, and supply chain collaboration efficiency. Heterogeneity tests indicate that the effect of patient capital is more pronounced in enterprises with a higher proportion of male executives, larger scale, stronger market competitiveness, and higher supply chain resilience. Further analysis reveals that stable equity plays a stronger role in enterprises with state-owned shareholders, while relational debt is more effective in regions with higher levels of financial development. The integration of digital and real economy industrial technologies effectively reduces stock price synchronicity and stock price crash risk, demonstrating dual optimization effects in enhancing information efficiency and suppressing risks. Economic management departments should improve the mechanism for cultivating patient capital, optimize the investment structure of capital markets, and promote supply chain collaboration and informatization development; enterprise heterogeneity and implement differentiated support strategies should be fully considered in policy-making process; enterprises should strengthen internal innovation investment capabilities to foster deeper technological integration

Based on the knowledge spillover theory, this study constructs a unique database measuring the development level of artificial intelligence (AI) basic research with the number of published deep learning papers. Combining data from listed companies between 2007 and 2019, it examines the impact of urban AI basic research levels on local enterprises’ innovation performance. The empirical results show that the development of urban AI basic research significantly promotes local enterprise innovation, and this effect becomes more pronounced as the industry relies more on the adoption of AI technology. The conclusion remains robust after addressing endogeneity with the instrumental variable approach and undergoing a series of robustness tests. Mechanism analysis reveals that AI basic research enhances enterprise innovation by improving R&D efficiency, increasing the degree of R&D capitalization, and optimizing the human capital structure. Heterogeneity analysis further indicates that the innovation-promoting effect is more significant in cities with a larger number of AI startups, stronger intellectual property protection, and better broadband network infrastructure. Additionally, the strengthening of AI basic research significantly boosts innovation performance in both state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises. Economic management departments and enterprises should attach great importance to the empowering effect of basic research in the AI era, particularly AI basic research represented by deep learning. They should vigorously promote the deep integration of industry-university-research, accelerate the industrialization of AI basic research achievements, and particularly advance the transition of key technologies centered on deep learning from theoretical breakthroughs to practical applications. Attention should also be paid to the heterogeneity of AI basic research’s impact, and digital transformation and innovation development should be advanced based on industry, regional, and enterprise characteristics.

In the sense of economic geography, cities are undoubtedly important engines of regional economic growth. Modern cities host diverse types of actors, and the interactions among these heterogeneous entities make cities typical complex adaptive systems. This study constructs a tripartite evolutionary game model involving three typical innovation actors—government, enterprises, and universities (research institutes)—and performs game analysis and simulation. The study finds that: 1) initial willingness is a key driver of collaborative innovation as the initial innovation willingness of the government, enterprises, and universities significantly influences the equilibrium outcome of the tripartite game. 2) sensitivity to costs and benefits determines innovation strategy choices as all three parties are highly sensitive to the costs and benefits of participating in innovation, while spillover and crowding-out effects play critical roles in the urban evolution process. 3) the dynamic coordination mechanism between the government and the market is crucial as appropriate government intervention can well address market failures, but over-intervention may inhibit the cultivation of innovative cities; government reputation also plays an important role in the evolution of innovative cities. 4) reasonable benefit distribution between enterprises and universities is a long-term guarantee for the evolution of innovative cities; the participation of universities and research institutes depends not only on government subsidies but also on enhancing their own innovation efficiency through interdisciplinary collaboration and deep industry-university-research integration. To strengthen the construction of innovative cities, China should build a multi-dimensional policy support system to stimulate the endogenous motivation of innovation actors, optimize the cost-benefit structure to establish a sustainable innovation ecosystem, construct a dynamic government-market coordination mechanism to enhance policy flexibility and adaptability, and improve the benefit distribution mechanism between enterprises and universities to motivate sustained participation from universities.

Against the backdrop of increasingly interconnected global cultural exchanges, the forms of cultural consumption have become more diverse. Using a large-scale inter-national questionnaire survey and structural equation modeling, this study explores the relationships between different dimensions of individual cultural intelligence, ethnocentrism in cultural consumption, and media exposure. The findings reveal that cognitive cultural intelligence and behavioral cultural intelligence are positively correlated with ethnocentrism in cultural consumption, while motivational cultural intelligence shows a negative correlation; metacognitive cultural intelligence, however, demonstrates no significant relationship—The “halo effect” observed in previous studies is thus debunked. In inter-cultural consumption, individuals tend to compare their native culture with others, forming evaluative attitudes that follow a progressive path of “respect-understanding-acceptance”. Yet, reaching the “acceptance” stage often necessitates overcoming cultural barriers. Higher cultural intelligence enhances people’s awareness of unfamiliar cultures but seldom fundamentally alters preexisting attitudes; it may even strengthen identification with one’s native culture, leading to ethnocentrism. Additionally, the study finds that different forms of media exposure positively moderate the relationship between cognitive cultural intelligence and ethnocentrism in cultural consumption, with social media exerting a stronger effect than traditional print media.

Appropriation in the field of art refers to consciously placing pre-existing materials or objects directly into new contexts and applying them to new works with little or no transformation. Current explorations of appropriation in art predominantly focus on the strategies of appropriating specific artworks, while authenticity, a key element for understanding the occurrence, intrinsic implications, and significance of artistic appropriation, has not been sufficiently highlighted or deeply elaborated. Therefore, systematically reviewing the historical origins of appropriation in art, examining the mapping and connection between appropriation and authenticity, outlining the distinctive trajectory of authenticity within appropriation and its unique contextual scope, and providing a rational explanation for the moral stance and cultural exchange issues guided by authenticity in artistic appropriation are conducive to revealing the active role of authenticity in the thematic content and structural multidimensionality of appropriation discourse.