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.

Taking China’s environmental “fee-to-tax” reform as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper employs a difference-in-differences (DID) approach to examine the impact of the green tax reform on firms’ cost of equity on a sample of A-share listed firms from 2012 to 2023. The results show that the implementation of the Environmental Protection Tax Law significantly reduced the cost of equity for heavily polluting firms. This finding remains robust after a series of robustness checks. Analyses of the underlying mechanisms reveal that the green tax reform lowered the cost of equity primarily through the channel of “Porter effect.” Moreover, the effect is more pronounced among firms located in the eastern China, those with stronger internal governance, and those operating in a stricter external monitoring environment.

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.

China’s green-finance expansion shifts attention from how much firms disclose to whether transition claims remain credible when verification tightens. Using a 2007–2022 panel of Chinese A-share listed firms (crash-risk measures available through 2021), we measure transition credibility by decomposing firms’ transition signals into verifiable actions, narrative disclosure, and realized environmental outcomes, and we propose a transparent narrative–action gap measure (WordsMinusActions = WordsIndex − ActionIndex) to capture ‘words without deeds.’ Exploiting the staggered rollout of China’s Central Environmental Protection Inspections (CEPI) as a plausibly exogenous increase in verification and enforcement intensity, we find that firms with high pre-CEPI narrative–action gaps experience a sharp increase in stock price crash risk around inspections: NCSKEW rises by about 0.09 in the inspection year and 0.20 in the following year (≈0.24 SD), and DUVOL rises by about 0.04 and 0.10 (≈0.27 SD) relative to low-gap firms. Consistent with enforcement discipline, these high-gap firms subsequently reduce disclosure intensity and increase verifiable green actions, narrowing the narrative–action gap after CEPI. The evidence supports governance that rewards verifiable action and consistency over disclosure volume in markets.

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.

Despite strong GDP growth and a favourable demographic profile, India faces an impending jobs crisis. A large share of the workforce remains employed in lowproductivity agriculture, while many new labour market entrants are absorbed into the persistently large informal sector. By contrast, China's rapid ascent was driven by manufacturing-led, export-oriented industrialisation, underpinned by large inflows of foreign direct investment and sustained technology transfer. India's manufacturing base remains modest in contrast. The bulk of well-paid, formal employment continues to be concentrated in the high-skill services sector. This paper contrasts the development trajectories of these two economies and identifies several underutilised jobs-growth levers in India: manufacturing, goods exports, manufacturing-oriented foreign direct investment and innovation. All of these remain underdeveloped, yet together they offer a pathway to more labour-absorbing, durable growth. Leveraging them effectively would be central to achieving India's 'Viksit Bharat 2047' ambition of attaining high-income status. The scale of India's challenge to employ eight to ten million labour-market entrants per year implies that job creation must become an explicit policy priority. This calls for greater trade openness, particularly with Asia and Europe, to integrate India into Asia-centric global supply chains as an alternative to China. Labour market reform is equally critical, making the effective implementation of the new labour codes essential. Strengthening innovation ecosystems and realigning education and skills policies to support industrialisation are also key. Without these structural shifts, India's current pattern of jobless growth risks transforming its demographic dividend into a long-term liability.

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.

This paper investigates the outstanding economic and scientific-technological achievements of the Soviet Union during the 1945–1953 period and analyzes how these successes influenced New China’s decision to adopt the Soviet development model. Drawing upon a review of the key Chinese studies and the influential Western works, this study synthesizes diverse research methods,including historical institutional analysis, archival research, and econometric modeling, to examine the driving forces behind Soviet economic development, its quantitative achievements, and its evolving international status relative to the United States. Moreover, the paper reviews the development of Sino-Soviet relations during both the Kuomintang era and the early years of the People’s Republic of China, and it provides a comprehensive factor analysis of why New China chose to introduce the “Soviet model.” The paper also discusses recent quantitative research that employs statistical models to assess the impact of Soviet achievements on China’s economic planning. The findings underscore that the rapid reconstruction and modernization of the Soviet economy not only set new benchmarks in industrial output and scientific progress but also provided a persuasive example that shaped China’s early development strategy.

The development of industrialization runs through the history of the People’s Republic of China. In the early years of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the Soviet Union provided important help for China’s industrialization construction, capital lending, talent training and technology transfer. By analyzing the proportion of China’s industrial output value in the total output value and the output of major industrial products during the period of the Soviet Union, it shows that the assistance of the Soviet Union had a very positive role in promoting the realization of ChinaIs industrialization, and helped China to lay the foundation of industrialization.In addition, some problems in accepting the Soviet Union’s aid to China also deserve our attention when promoting the new industrialization. The research explores both the internal and external factors that led to China’s acceptance of Soviet assistance.The study examines the political, economic, and historical contexts that created a favorable environment for such aid, analyzes the various modes and scales of the assistance implemented, and presents statistical data that underscore the transformative social and economic achievements derived from this partnership.Furthermore, the paper highlights the contributions of quantitative analyses in understanding the aid’s impact, discusses the experiences and lessons learned from the Soviet aid period, and assesses the evolving dynamics of Sino—Soviet relations,particularly the gradual divergence in economic development models. The findings shed light on how Soviet aid laid the groundwork for China’s industrialization while also foreshadowing future ideological and developmental separations.