From three aspects of theoretical origins, core essence and practical transcendence, this paper expounds the economic ethics implications of Chinese path to modernization. The economic ethics of Chinese path to modernization has a profound theoretical origin, which takes the Marxist economic ethical thought as its academic sources, the ethical concepts in the fine traditional Chinese culture as its cultural foundation, and the outstanding achievements in the western economic ethical thought as a useful reference. It is a complete system that includes production ethics, distribution ethics, exchange ethics, and consumption ethics, and unified under the people-centered fundamental position. It takes the people-centered position, efficient production, fair distribution, harmonious exchange, and coordinated consumption as basic characteristics. It has properly handled the five pairs of relationships between people and the country, efficiency and fairness, material civilization and spiritual civilization, man and nature, development and security, and created a new humanistic economic form. In this regard, it is supposed to continually promote the economic ethics of Chinese path to modernization research in a problem-oriented way, in order to give full play to the important role of economic ethics in value guidance and behavioral norms in the new era and new journey, and promote the realization of the goal of building a great modern socialist country.
Based on the five-phase input-output table of Beijing from 2007 to 2022, this paper uses the input-output analysis method to calculate the scale of Beijing's digital economy, and deeply analyzes its structural characteristics and industry differences. The results show that the scale of Beijing's digital economy continues to expand, and its proportion in GDP is rising steadily. The digital integration sector plays a significant role, and the tertiary industry plays a leading role in the integration process, especially in the fields of health and finance. At the same time, however, there are great differences in the level of digital development among different industries. The degree of digitalization of traditional industries such as agriculture is low, and the problem of uneven development among industries is still prominent. In this regard, we should accelerate the extension of digital infrastructure to low-level areas, support low-level digital industries by classification, enhance the spillover effect of integrated industries, and build a collaborative mechanism for industry-university-research-application, so as to comprehensively improve the quality and sustainability of Beijing's digital economy development, and at the same time provide theoretical support for other regions to explore the development path of digital economy.
After the outbreak of An-Shi Rebellion, the Tang court was in urgent need of reconstructing a new concept of "Great Unity" to cope with the crisis of internal and external troubles, and accordingly, new changes emerged in the writing of Ci Fu. However, there is a notable lack of academic attention to this topic. Ci Fu in the Mid-Tang Dynasty publicized the idea of "respecting the emperor" in the Spring and Autumn Period's Gongyang School, endowing the traditional hunting Ci Fu with the realistic significance of opposing the unrest caused by regional military governors. At the same time, the writing of the mandate of heaven was used to replace the historical narrative of the founding of Tang Dynasty through military conquests, interpreting the legitimacy and orthodoxy of imperial power and restoring the imperial authority. Under the confluence of the political idea of "respecting the sovereign" and the trend of Confucian revival, scholars upheld Confucianism as "the teachings of the former kings". Ci Fu also began to include content criticizing Buddhism, while carrying forward the traditional theme of upholding Confucianism, presenting a creative tendency of rejecting Buddhism and advocating Confucianism. Mid-Tang Ci Fu focused on showcasing the diverse music, dance, and ritual costumes of various ethnic groups. It highlighted the cultural "Distinction between Huaxia and Barbarians", while also demonstrating the concept of "Huaxia and Barbarians Mutual Change" through depictions of social custom transformations. Therefore, Ci Fu became an important vehicle for Mid-Tang scholars to reconstruct the traditional cosmopolitan order and reorganize the ideological framework of the cultural system.
During the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, the Communist Party of China (CPC) against the backdrop of a shifting context where the nation's survival hung in the balance, constructed the political symbol of the "Anti-Japanese National United Front" through flexible contextual adaptation, inclusive subject construction, precise semantic definition, and strategic meaning interpretation, thereby achieving a politically mobilizing effect of profound significance. The CPC's discourse on united resistance evolved from a state of multiple interchangeable terms before gradually stabilizing into the fixed political expression of the "Anti-Japanese National United Front", marking a shift from class revolutionary discourse to national salvation discourse. From the perspectives of target orientation, subject orientation, method orientation, and form orientation, the discursive construction of the "Anti-Japanese National United Front" was not only tied to the CPC's precise understanding of the overall interests of the Chinese nation and the partial interests of various political parties and social strata, but also deeply connected to the semantic connotations and logical evolution of different expressions advocating united resistance against Japan. The discursive construction experience of the Anti-Japanese National United Front offers valuable practical insights for the construction of united front discourse in the new era. To build united front discourse in the new era, it is necessary to integrate contextual realities, semantic connotations, and meaning interpretation, advancing discourse construction holistically in terms of constructors, target orientation, content orientation, method orientation, and form orientation, thereby forming a united front discourse system with strong cohesion and guiding power.
Within the history of Chinese thought, the discourse has never been confined to a singular voice that reveres the gu and denigrates the jin. Yet, whether the Legalist view of gu and jin can be simply characterized as favoring the jin over the gu remains open to debate. A close analysis of the Legalist discourse on gu and jin reveals that what is often interpreted as a denigration of the gu is in fact a critique directed at the Confucian practices of "emulating the ancients" (fagu) and "learning from the ancients"(xuegu). One may argue that the Legalists perceptively identified the ossification of the traditional gu-jin paradigm, which, under the prevailing valuation of the gu, gradually lost its capacity for internal dialectical reflection. From the perspective of modernity, the traditional Chinese notions of gu and jin do not correspond to purely temporal or historical categories. Crucially, the Legalist conception of the jin not only refers to the current socio-political conditions and values suited to the present, but also embodies a critique of the gu-jin discourse itself. Significantly, this critique does not lead to a rejection of the gu-jin framework; rather, through their engagement with the dialectic between "the transformation of gu and jin" and "the unity of gu and jin", the Legalists achieve both a form of civilizational self-awareness characteristic of modernity and a profound handling of the relationship between tradition and modernity. In addressing the modernity of Chinese civilization, the Legalist approach may be encapsulated in the phrase tong gu jin zhi bian ("comprehending the transformations between gu and jin"), which not only emphasizes the recognition and dialectic of temporal distinctions, but also highlights the civilizational subject as an agent of historical change—thereby effecting a modern transcendence of traditional historical-philosophical narratives.
Based on the matching samples of China industrial enterprises and customs database from 2000 to 2013 and the uncertain information of 143 export markets, this paper empirically tests the influence and mechanism of the economic and political uncertainty of export destinations (uncertainty for short) on enterprises' decision to enter and exit the destination market by using the multidimensional fixed effect model. The results show that uncertainty hinders the entry of enterprises and accelerates the exit of enterprises, and the impact of exit is stronger. The results of heterogeneity analysis show that the impact of uncertainty on export decision-making is related to the ability of enterprises to cope with shocks and market characteristics. The mechanism analysis shows that the ability of enterprises to cope with shocks reduces the sunk cost of exports, which leads enterprises with high productivity and strong coping ability, such as foreign-funded enterprises, to strategically enter and exit the market, showing the characteristics of more frequent exit from the high-uncertainty market. At the same level of uncertainty, the uncertainty characteristics of export destination market can affect the future income expectation of enterprises, so uncertainty has a stronger influence on the exit behavior of enterprises in destinations with low information barriers and low entry costs.
New-quality productivity refers to an advanced form of productivity driven by technological innovation, with innovation and high quality as its core characteristics. It represents the sinicized development of Marxist productivity theory and provides theoretical guidance and strategic direction for promoting high-quality economic development and achieving Chinese path to modernization. In the digital economy era, digital industries—characterized by high technological intensity and data-driven features—naturally align with new-quality production factors and production relations, thus serving as a key driver for the advancement of new-quality productivity. At the theoretical level, digital industries integrate deeply with other production factors, exerting a multiplier effect that contributes to cultivating new-quality labor, generating advanced means of production, fostering new quality production objects, and reshaping new-quality production relations, thereby empowering new-quality productivity. However, digital industries currently face multiple practical challenges, including the urgent need for breakthroughs in core digital technologies, insufficient realization of data value, weak platform support, and underdeveloped industrial ecosystems—all of which hinder their empowering effects. In light of these challenges, it is essential to construct a systematic implementation pathway encompassing "digital technology-data factors-digital platforms-organizational ecosystems" to enhance the empowering role of digital industries and accelerate the high-quality development of China's economy.
Drawing on panel data from 274 prefecture-level cities in China over the period of 2010-2021, this study exploits the quasi-natural experimental setting of the establishment of Big Data Bureaus and employs a difference-in-differences approach to systematically examine the impact of government data governance proxiesed by the creation of Big Data Bureaus on the development of a unified national market. The findings indicate that government-led data governance significantly enhances the construction of a unified national market. This effect operates primarily through three internal mechanisms: improving the business environment, reducing transaction costs, and fostering fair competition. Heterogeneity analysis further reveals that the positive effect of data governance is more pronounced in central cities and in regions characterized by higher levels of digital infrastructure, stronger public trust in government, and more robust intellectual property rights protection. Accordingly, it is imperative to improve cross-level, cross-regional, and cross-departmental data governance frameworks to strengthen the informational and institutional foundation of unified market construction and enhance the precision and responsiveness of policy implementation. At the same time, promoting data integration and sharing can facilitate institutional and service restructuring, systematically lower transaction costs, optimize the business environment, and reinforce fair competition. Furthermore, differentiated strategies should be adopted to accommodate regional disparities, enhance data governance capacities and digital resource allocation, and promote the coordinated and efficient functioning of a unified national market.
Education, technology, and talent serve as fundamental and strategic supporting elements for Chinese path to modernization, and their integrated and collaborative development represents a key measure to enhance national innovation efficiency. To unblock the benign cycle of education, technology, and talent, it is necessary to start from the internal relationships among the three, understand their underlying logic and connection mechanisms, and grasp the dynamic evolution law of their integrated symbiosis and collaborative promotion. It is essential to explore full-cycle cultivation mechanisms, strengthen all-dimensional interdisciplinary construction, and advance full-factor industry-university-research integration, so as to shape talent advantages through high-quality education systems and inject momentum into scientific and technological innovation. It is necessary to link scientific research institutions, optimize the allocation of scientific and technological resources, promote achievement transformation, deepen the integration of science and education, and facilitate the emergence of high-end talent through strengthened linkage and integration. It is important to improve talent introduction and cultivation work, unblock talent utilization mechanisms, perfect talent evaluation methods, optimize the talent ecosystem, and achieve two-way empowerment between scientific research education and comprehensive educational reform.
Based on census data, this study examines the trend of first marriage patterns in the 20 years since the 21st century from the dimensions of when and whether to marry in big Chinese cities, represented by Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. It further explores the mechanisms of the trend, relying on the theoretical framework of the 'Ready, Willing, Able (RWA)'. The results indicate that the postponement in first marriage has become prevalent in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, even more pronounced than the whole country, with the second decade in Beijing and Shanghai showing a clear acceleration compared with the first decade. The postponement in first marriage in Hong Kong is about 20 to 30 years earlier than that of Beijing and Shanghai, and the degree of postponement is most pronounced at present, but the pace of postponement has slowed down since the beginning of the new century. Female's first marriages continue to be earlier than male's, while the postponement of first marriage is more accelerated for females than for males in Beijing and Shanghai over the last two decades, as well as in Hong Kong in the last two decades of the last century. The urgency among young generations entering marriage in the three major cities has weakened. Hong Kong has a relatively high permanent unmarried rate, and the proportion of permanent unmarried in Beijing and Shanghai, although relatively low compared to Hong Kong, are higher than the national average. And there is also an evident trend of increasing permanent unmarried among the younger cohorts. On the whole, the current Chinese society is still characterized by 'late marriage and universal marriage', but the postponement in first marriage will continue, and the forces shaking the pattern of universal marriage has also been forming among the younger generations. The pattern of universal marriage may be broken from the big cities firstly.
