This study investigates how institutional resilience facilitates successful intergenerational succession in Chinese family firms. Drawing on institutional resilience theory and socioemotional wealth (SEW) theory, we employ fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to explore configurational causal pathways. Based on a sample of 20 Chinese family firms, we identify four core conditions (pre-succession planning, multi-dimensional governance structure, professional tool empowerment, cultural spirit inheritance) and one contextual condition (institutional environment adaptability). Results show that cultural spirit inheritance is the only necessary condition for successful succession, while five equifinal configurations of institutional resilience are sufficient to achieve effective succession. By contrast, weakness in any two core institutional resilience dimensions significantly increases the likelihood of succession failure. This study advances contextualized family business research by unpacking the combinatorial mechanisms of institutional resilience in an emerging market context and provides actionable implications for family firms and policymakers.

We examine whether campaign-based anti-corruption approaches effectively curb corruption in the long term. Our empirical setting exploits a unique anti-corruption campaign in the Chinese football community from 2009 to 2012. With match-fixing measured as abnormal points won in key matches, we find that although an anti-corruption campaign reduces match-fixing during its active phase, its long-term effect fades quickly, and the level of match-fixing significantly rebounds after the campaign ends. Our results indicate that without any institutional changes, combating corruption by launching intermittent campaigns has limited long-term effects.

This study examines how institutional entrepreneurs in China’s aviation sector navigate the dual pressures of domestic carbon emission trading schemes (ETS) and the global Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA). Using qualitative case study methods, including 24 elite interviews with aviation executives, regulators, and carbon market experts, we analyse the role of China Southern Airlines (CSA) as a key actor in sustainability transition. Findings reveal that field-level contradictions, social legitimacy, and collective institutional entrepreneurship shape the adoption of carbon reduction strategies. The study contributes to aviation environmental and sustainability policies and institutional theory by highlighting the interplay between regulatory compliance and global sustainability norms in emerging economies.

Digital technologies are often portrayed as disruptive levers for decarbonisation, yet many digital green initiatives improve transparency and efficiency without redesigning how environmental value is authorised, coordinated, and appropriated. We address this puzzle by theorising green digital business model innovation as the evolution of venture-level configurations under multi-domain selection in policy-steered sustainability transitions. Building on the activity-system view of business models and on innovation-studies, we define business model radicality as coupled reconfiguration across content, structure, and governance rather than technology novelty alone. We further theorise a cross-domain convergence requirement: configurations are retained only when they align simultaneously with institutional role allocations, market interfaces, technological infrastructures, and ecological verification demands. A comparative longitudinal study of three blockchain-enabled initiatives in China’s energy-finance nexus shows that radical disintermediation is screened out early when any single domain withholds authorisation or credible settlement, whereas incumbent-compatible configurations are retained through sequencing, interpretive pruning, and boundary-spanning alignment work. The study contributes to innovation studies by treating business models as meso-level selection objects, sharpening configuration-level radicality, and explaining why digital green opportunities often remain incremental in regulated transition systems.

This paper exploits China’s culture-oriented institutional reform as a quasinatural experiment to examine the impact of cultural policies on water pollution. Using a difference-in-differences approach with city-level panel data from 2003 to 2020, we find that the reform leads to a significant reduction in water pollution in pilot cities. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the effect is more pronounced in cities with better economic performance, higher administrative status, richer tourism resources, and more abundant human capital. The reform prompts a shift in local industrial structure toward less-polluting sectors, with a marked contraction in pollution-intensive activities. It also strengthens local environmental regulation and enhances green innovation, thereby contributing to pollution reduction. Our findings highlight the spillover environmental effects of policies not explicitly designed for environmental purposes.

Against the backdrop of escalating global carbon emission reduction urgency and China’s "dual carbon" goals, individual carbon trading (ICT) has emerged as a key measure to tap into consumer-side emission reduction potential. However, the current ICT mechanism remains in the exploratory stage, plagued by limited access to formal trading channels, strict entry barriers, and low public penetration, only 5 carbon exchanges in China allow individual participation, with fewer than 10,000 total participants. Focusing on mechanism integrity and integrating the carbon inclusive system, this study explores the influencing factors of ICT operation and constructs targeted optimization strategies. Based on Mechanism Design Theory, the Theory of Planned Behavior, and Value-Belief-Norm Theory, a theoretical model covering five core ICT components was established. Using data from 1,200 questionnaires across 15 Chinese cities, multiple linear regression and hierarchical regression were employed to analyze the impacts of institutional fairness, technical usability, social atmosphere, and individual cognition. Results show: (1) Institutional fairness increases quota compliance by 38% through transparent rules; (2) User-friendly technical tools boost engagement by 1.8x, enhancing accounting accuracy and platform efficiency; (3) Social atmosphere moderates the effect of individual cognition on incentive conversion, particularly strongly in rural areas; (4) Individual cognition mediates the relationship between social atmosphere and trading platform efficiency. Additionally, optimizing mechanism components is more critical for long-term operation than single incentives. This study proposes a multi-dimensional optimization framework, providing theoretical and policy references for improving ICT integrity and advancing "dual carbon" goals.

This study examines how emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) respond to cross-national diversity in environmental regulation. Prior research suggests that internationalization exposes EMNEs to diverse environmental standards and may facilitate regulatory learning, yet offers a limited understanding of the mechanisms through which such exposure translates into green innovation. Drawing on institutional theory, we argue that green innovation is particularly fostered when EMNEs operate across host countries whose environmental regulatory regimes are more stringent than those in the home country, and when such exposure varies across multiple host locations. We theorize that this form of environmental regulatory diversity creates learning pressures and legitimacy incentives that motivate EMNEs to upgrade their environmental capabilities through green innovation. Using panel data comprising 9,362 firm-year observations from 1,088 Chinese MNEs over the period 2008–2021, we find support for our arguments. We further show that these effects are contingent on organizational and institutional conditions, specifically top management teams’ technological expertise and the strength of intellectual property enforcement in home-country locations. These findings advance research on EMNE learning and sustainable innovation under complex global environmental governance.

This opinion paper analyzes China’s new mandatory climate disclosure standards, which were formally launched between December 2024 and December 2025. We argue that China has not simply adopted the investor-focused model of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) or the European Union’s comprehensive double materiality approach. Instead, it has crafted a distinct “third way”—a new model of sustainability governance marked by a deliberate blending of global convergence and national priorities. Through a close, provision-level comparison, we identify eight specific provisions where China’s standard goes beyond both IFRS S2 (Climate-related Disclosures, issued by the International Sustainability Standards Board) and ESRS E1 (Climate Change, issued under the European Sustainability Reporting Standards), revealing a consistent rationale that treats corporate disclosure as an instrument of national governance, reaching institutional completeness by simultaneously issuing assurance standards, and maintaining developmental sensitivity through mechanisms like the proportionality principle. While considerable implementation challenges persist, this paper concludes that China’s approach presents a useful and reproducible model for other developing nations, positioning China as an active contributor to the evolving global standards architecture.

In recent years, despite China’s sustained expansion of public investment in education, pronounced regional disparities in educational development persist, revealing the practical constraints of the existing fiscal sharing structure in advancing equity objectives. In particular, the mechanism through which the allocation of fiscal responsibilities between central and local governments influences educational equity performance remains insufficiently examined in a systematic and empirical manner. From the perspective of fiscal structure, this study seeks to identify and explicate the evolutionary trajectory of educational fiscal equity in China, as well as its underlying institutional determinants. To this end, the study constructs a fiscal performance evaluation framework comprising seven core indicators. Objective weights are assigned using the entropy method, and the TOPSIS model is subsequently employed to conduct a comparative ranking analysis of national education fiscal performance over the period from 2013 to 2023. The results indicate that educational fiscal equity has exhibited an overall upward trend during the study period; however, its evolution displays clear stage-specific characteristics. In the initial phase, improvements in equity were primarily driven by fiscal expansion, leading to rapid gains. In the subsequent period, progress became increasingly constrained by structural optimization bottlenecks, with fiscal performance gradually stabilizing at a plateau in more recent years. Further analysis reveals that the persistently heavy fiscal burden borne by local governments, coupled with the relatively limited regulatory and equalization capacity of the central government, constitutes a key structural impediment to the sustained improvement of educational equity. By elucidating the internal mechanism through which the allocation of fiscal responsibilities shapes educational equity performance, this study provides both theoretical grounding and quantitative support for deepening fiscal system reform and optimizing policies related to the allocation of educational resources.

This article views the economic development history of New China as a history of openness and constant adjustment. We examine China’s economic development and early open policies from 1953 to 1978, analyze how the nation navigated between planned and open economic models during the formative period. Through a comprehensive review ofthe key Chinese and Western scholarship, investigates major initiatives including the Soviet-assisted 156 Projects, First Five-Year Plan, The policy of Eight Characters and the later “Four Three Plan” of the Western engagement. The study highlights both achievements and challenges, particularly in industrial growth and technology transfer, while assessing the impact of critical events like the Sino-Soviet split. Statistical analysis and quantitative models demonstrate how these early experiments with economic openness, despite ideological constraints and operational difficulties, established crucial institutional and technological foundations for China’s subsequent reform and modernization. The findings offer valuable insights into China’s unique development path and its implications for emerging economies.