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.

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.

A central premise of mandatory disclosure regulation is that greater transparency reduces information asymmetry and lowers borrowing costs. We challenge this premise by examining industry-level operational disclosure - a regulatory form that reveals horizontally comparable information across peer firms rather than refining individual firm fundamentals. Exploiting the staggered introduction of mandatory industry-specific disclosure guidelines by Chinese stock exchanges between 2013 and 2019, we find that enhanced industry disclosure significantly widens bond credit spreads by approximately 54 basis points - the opposite of what standard disclosure theory predicts. This counterintuitive effect is more pronounced in non-homogeneous industries, among smaller firms, and for bonds restricted to institutional investors. Mechanism tests confirm two opposing channels: disclosure reduces information asymmetry while simultaneously intensifying product market competition by exposing strategically sensitive operational metrics. Our evidence challenges the one-size-fits-all approach to disclosure regulation and highlights that the competitive implications of disclosed information - not merely its quantity - shape credit risk pricing.

This study challenges democratic citizenship theory by examining altruistic behaviour in authoritarian China. We find that financial resources influence prosocial engagement primarily through psychological mediators such as long-term planning and self-discovery, rather than directly providing material means for participation. Communist Party membership shapes specific domestic ideological orientations, but not attitudes toward market regulation or income equality, while cultural tradition emerges as a stronger predictor of certain political attitudes than party affiliation. Cluster analysis identifies three distinct citizen profiles: (1) future-oriented altruists; (2) status-driven contributors; and, (3) short-termpragmatists, revealing motivational heterogeneity within authoritarian publics. These findings suggest that authoritarian citizenship operates through psychological mediation and plural motivational pathways fundamentally different from democratic societies, with potential applicability to other single-party regimes where states actively structure prosocial behaviour. The study contributes to comparative authoritarianism literature by theorizing how regime type moderates the relationship between socio-economic resources, political identity, and civic engagement.

The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped regional economic landscapes. However, academic research has not yet sufficiently addressed how external investment in regions has been transformed under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and its influence on industrial evolution patterns. In this paper, we integrate insights from economic geography literature and develop a conceptual framework to further theorise the relationship between external shocks, changes in the industrial heterogeneity of investment from regional core cities, and local industrial dynamics. Using the COVID-19 pandemic and the Yangtze River Delta region as a case study, we employ an intensity-based Difference-in-Differences (DID) approach and draw on business registration and enterprise investment databases to estimate the impact of the pandemic shock on the evolution of local industrial dynamics between 2018 and 2024. Our findings indicate that after the core cities underwent the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic, the path dependence of industrial evolution in their surrounding areas significantly increased. The stronger the economic linkage with Shanghai, the more pronounced this effect. However, this impact also exhibits spatial heterogeneity across the Yangtze River Delta, associated with regional industrial division of labour and cooperation. This paper offers an innovative examination of how changes in the industrial heterogeneity of investment inflows from core cities—specifically, dimensions such as relatedness to local industries, industrial upgrading, and diversification—shape the mechanisms of local industrial evolution following the COVID-19 shock. Our findings offer important implications for regional development and adaptive responses in the post-pandemic era.

Recent technological advancements have enabled the emergence of business organizations fully managed by algorithms, such as decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) or through artificial intelligence (AI), as observed in China’s online food delivery sector. These organizations are collectively referred to as algorithm-managed firms (AMFs). Given machines’ capabilities in data collection and analysis, human directors are increasingly being replaced by algorithms or AI in specific sectors. This article contends that algorithms can effectively take over human directors’ managerial, monitoring, and mediating roles. The diminishing role of human directors raises certain concerns of stakeholder protection. Unlike human directors, algorithm directors or managers would not consider stakeholders’ interests unless clearly instructed to do so. However, the algorithm supplier and the AMFs may lack the incentives to fully consider stakeholders because they do not always internalize the social costs. To address the challenges of AMFs, policymakers need to consider different regulation strategies. First, they must choose between command-and-control regulations and target-based regulations. Command-and-control regulations often do not work well because regulators lack enough information or control over complex algorithms. Instead of setting detailed technical rules, policymakers should adopt target-based regulations that let the algorithm balance various interests and regulate its own operations. Second, policymakers should decide between entity-based and algorithm-based regulations. Algorithm-based regulation is more suitable because it prevents companies from passing costs onto society. The state could consider regulating the composition of the board of directors of the algorithm supplier to ensure that they incorporate the concerns of stakeholders’ interests in the development of the algorithm. Additionally, corporate law doctrines that protect creditors and other stakeholders, such as piercing the corporate veil and limiting liability for corporate torts, must be revisited and modified because their foundational assumptions no longer align with the realities of AMFs.

The northwest region of China faces many practical challenges, and its digital economy lags behind other areas of China. Digital transformation is a new source of competitive advantage in the digital economy era, which can help northwest enterprises rebuild their competitive advantage in the digital age, accelerate the development of the digital economy in the northwest region, bridge the digital gap between the East and the West, and promote the high-quality development of the national digital economy. In this study, the PLS-SEM method is used to collect data from 172 enterprises across five provinces in northwest China, to deeply analyze the mechanism and path through which digital transformation reshapes enterprise competitive advantage, identify the key sticking point hindering digital transformation in northwest China, and then propose more targeted strategic suggestions. It is found that the resource base of enterprises in northwest China is generally weak, making it difficult to deliver direct competitive advantage; existing enterprise resources can provide basic conditions for digital transformation and resource-orchestration capability; although digital transformation cannot directly create competitive performance, it can indirectly deliver competitive advantage by positively affecting resource-orchestration capability; resource-orchestration capability directly and significantly affects enterprise competitive performance and is the core competency for enterprises to build digital resilience.

We use nearly a decade’s worth of panel data from European Union Chamber of Commerce in China business confidence surveys to analyse the deteriorating outlooks of EU firms in China from 2017 to 2025. All firms in China currently face challenges including slow profit growth and deflation. These circumstances have contributed to a rare drop of foreign direct investment into China over the last two years. However, certain challenges are particularly acute for foreign firms, including those from the EU. According to survey results, business sentiment among EU firms operating in China has never been bleaker. Respondents view their profitability, growth opportunities and competitiveness negatively, while fewer respondents than ever plan to expand their Chinese operations. Moreover, significant shares of respondents report recent increases in political pressure from the Chinese state and media, while nearly a third of respondents say they are siloing their Chinese operations, meaning separating them from other global activities. Disaggregated by size, sector, and years of operation in China, insightful differences emerge between the business strategies of EU firms. We broadly classify these into four categories: doubling-down, hedging, hibernating and ready to exit. EU policymakers should consider how to address the challenges EU firms in China face, such as asset-heavy sectors being ‘stuck’ in China and smaller firms lacking the capacity to operate at a loss in China’s market. The EU might need to facilitate transitions for these companies, helping them to reduce exposure to China and diversify into other emerging markets.

February 9, 2025 marks the 10th anniversary of the establishment of China's ETF options market. To celebrate this anniversary, China will open the ETF options market to qualified foreign investors on October 9, 2025. This is both an opportunity and a challenge. This is the first time in a decade that China has decided to open its ETF options market. The challenge is that foreign investors will face competition from China's 1.08 million options investors. This article will discuss the basic rules and requirements for options trading in China. In addition, we will introduce the application of Confusion Quotient sentiment index in options trading, and analyze how options contract premiums fluctuated significantly after the Fed cut interest rates by 50 basis points on September 18, 2024. Within a month, the Fed's interest rate cut triggered a sharp rise in call options contracts in China's options market, with a maximum profit of 3507.32%, and put option contracts suffered huge losses, with a maximum loss of 99.91%. Our findings prove that China's ETF options market is highly volatile, presenting both opportunities and challenges for foreign investors. Options trading is a double-edged sword, and you need to be cautious when entering the market.

This article examines the rapid growth of Real-World Asset (RWA) tokenisation in Asia, focusing on Hong Kong as an emerging regional hub. It analyses three sectoral case studies in renewable energy, real estate, and financial instruments to illustrate the practical applications, market implications, and regulatory challenges of RWA projects. As of September 2025, the global RWA market reached an estimated value of $30.91 billion and is projected to grow into a trillion-dollar market within the next decade. The article highlights Asia’s proactive regulatory initiatives aimed at developing clear tokenisation standards and promoting the sustainable and responsible growth of the virtual asset sector. Supported by regulatory sandboxes and institutional participation in leading financial centres such as Hong Kong and Singapore, the region has become a focal point of innovation in asset tokenisation. Following the introduction, Section 2 reviews the latest developments in RWA as a fast-emerging area of financial and legal practice. Section 3 presents three case studies, while Section 4 provides practical guidance for asset owners and investors. Section 5 discusses key regulatory models and the overseas expansion of Chinese enterprises through digital assets tokenisation, and Section 6 concludes with implications for regulators, investors, and policymakers.