The formation of zombie enterprises has seriously hindered healthy economic development, while the emergence of energy big data centers provides new tools and perspectives for zombie enterprises governance. This paper constructs a quasinatural experiment based on the establishment of energy big data centers and empirically examines their governance effects on zombie enterprises using data from Chinese A-share listed companies during 2015-2023.

    The study finds that the construction of energy big data centers significantly inhibits the formation of zombie enterprises, and this effect remains robust after a series of robustness tests including parallel trend tests, variable substitution, entropy balancing, stacked difference-in-differences, and placebo tests. The mechanism analysis reveals that energy big data centers exert governance effects through dual pathways of "eliminating the old" and "fostering the new". On the "eliminating the old" pathway, energy big data centers significantly reduce government subsidies and regional non-performing loans, cutting off the non-market-based support mechanisms for zombie enterprises. On the "fostering the new" pathway, energy big data centers significantly improve total factor productivity and total asset turnover ratio, activating the endogenous revival mechanism of zombie enterprises through cost reduction and efficiency enhancement.
    Further heterogeneity analysis shows that from the perspective of regulatory entities, the governance effect of energy big data centers is more significant in regions with higher entrepreneurial vitality and in enterprises with higher business complexity, indicating that big data tools play an important role in strengthening regulatory motivation and breaking through regulatory difficulties. From the perspective of market competition, the governance effect of energy big data centers is more pronounced in regions with more sufficient market competition and higher marketization levels, suggesting that enterprises have stronger willingness and capability to transform management advantages into market competitive advantages.
    The contributions of this study are threefold. First, it expands the theoretical perspective of zombie enterprises governance by exploring the role of big data and new technologies, providing a dual governance framework encompassing both "eliminating the old" and "fostering the new", which addresses the technical difficulties under information asymmetry that existing research has overlooked. Second, it bridges the technical gap between institutional optimization and efficient implementation under information asymmetry, exploring the "last mile" implementation mechanism of zombie enterprises governance policies. The mechanism tests demonstrate that energy big data not only promotes effective supervision but also helps activate enterprises' endogenous vitality, offering theoretical insights into the revival mechanism of zombie enterprises. Third, it provides empirical evidence on the practical effects of energy big data centers construction as an important "data-energy integration" policy, offering useful policy implications for government improvement of zombie enterprises governance policies, enterprise enhancement of management efficiency, and construction of sustainable data governance mechanisms.

    The findings suggest that external entities should fully utilize the "instrumental significance" of energy big data centers to achieve "elimination of the old" for zombie enterprises, enterprises should recognize the empowerment effects of energy big data centers to promote "fostering of the new", and governments should improve data governance and coordination mechanisms to ensure the long-term effective operation of energy big data centers.

    The deepening reform of the state-owned economy is critical to comprehensively building a socialist modern country in the new era. Transferring state capital to social security funds can coordinate the three major goals of state-owned enterprises-economy, politics, and society-for more social contributions by focusing on economic goals. This article focuses on the impact of local-level state capital transfer policies on the employment decisions of state-owned enterprises: (1) Transferring state capital to social security funds helps clarify the relationship between government and enterprises and improve internal governance efficiency, thereby-Suppressing over-employment with a decrease of 36% in excess employee scale.(2) There are three types of management subjects for the transferred state-owned equity: Social Security Fund, Department of Finance, and State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, with the governance effect gradually decreasing; Compared to a 10% equity transfer ratio, a 30% transfer ratio generates stronger governance effects; relative to exercising voting rights in shareholder meetings, the direct appointment of directors and executives by receiving entities demonstrates more pronounced governance improvements. (3) The improvement effect of employment quality is stronger in areas with greater pension payment pressure and higher levels of monopoly and labor intensity in state-owned enterprises. (4) The policy not only improves the human capital structure, enhance R&D innovation and production efficiency, but also continuously enriches local social security funds, enhance the capital market value of state-owned equity and promote dividend Payouts. The 
findings indicate that transferring state capital to social security funds integrates the economic and social responsibilities of state-owned enterprises. By advancing the theoretical underpinnings of the state capital transfer policy, this study provides substantive guidance for reforming the state sector, thereby supporting the strategic pursuit of Chinese-style modernization.

    To address structural unemployment caused by economic slowdown and enterprise transformation, the government has implemented the employment stabilization policy under the unemployment insurance system, aiming to stabilize employment and safeguard livelihoods. A thorough investigation of how this policy affects the allocation of corporate labor resources not only helps to reveal its micro-level transmission mechanisms but also provides a theoretical basis for optimizing and dynamically adjusting future policies. Using data from Chinese listed companies during 2007-2023, this study examines the impact of employment stabilization policies on labor investment efficiency from the perspective of unemployment insurance's employment stabilization function. The findings reveal: (1) The employment stabilization policy significantly enhances corporate labor investment efficiency, with results remaining robust after endogeneity and robustness tests. (2) Mechanism analysis shows the policy improves labor investment efficiency through narrowing the salary gap, strengthening skills training, financing constraint alleviation, and agency cost reduction. In addition, the heterogeneity study finds that firms with higher industry concentration, lower level of internal control, and higher labor intensity show stronger policy responses. (3) Further research demonstrates the policy significantly expands R&D personnel scale and drives net employment growth, while showing no significant impact on labor outsourcing substitution or new position creation, highlighting its stabilizing-existing-employment and promoting-innovation synergistic effects. This study reveals the micro-level mechanisms underlying the transformation of unemployment insurance systems from passive income protection to proactive employment interventions, expands research boundaries on factors influencing corporate labor investment efficiency, and provides evidence for optimizing targeted mechanisms of employment stabilization policies.

    This paper focuses on the practical challenges of development finance in the Global South, comparatively analyzing the similarities, differences, and internal linkages among three major external financing channels—development aid, sovereign debt, and foreign investment—in terms of economic development outcomes and domestic capital formation, and summarizes their evolutionary logic based on their distinctive characteristics. On the one hand, although these three channels differ in concept and developmental effects, they exhibit pronounced complementarities in terms of sources, scale, costs, and the degree of capital patience. On the other hand, all three types of external capital are important sources of development finance for 
the Global South, with a progressive evolution from foreign aid to external debt and foreign investment. At present, international development finance in the Global South faces both structural imbalances on the supply side and stage-specific tensions on the demand side, which seriously constrain its sustainability. As an emerging provider of international development finance, China has gradually developed a blended finance paradigm that integrating foreign aid, overseas lending and outward investment considering the developmental stages of Southern countries, which is development-oriented and project-based. By mobilizing private capital while strengthening the patience of development finance, this paradigm not only helps enhance the sustainability of development financing but also promotes the diffusion of China's modernization experience to the Global South. With the continuous rise of China's status in the development finance system, it will further coordinate the supply and demand sides of development finance, promote paradigm shifts in international development finance, and shape a new international development financing system that is more inclusive, efficient, and sustainable for the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals.

    To evaluate the role of China's path to modernization in mitigating the global trend of rising income inequality, this paper revisits the classical Marxian framework of productive accumulation and income distribution, in contrast to the conventional world systems theory. Utilizing a novel panel dataset covering 2003-2020, we empirically examine the impact of China's outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) on income inequality in host countries. Our baseline results indicate that China's OFDI significantly reduces income inequality in recipient economies. To address potential endogeneity concerns, we construct an instrumental variable based on the ratio between the institutional distance from China and China's minimum wage standard. The results remain robust after accounting for other sources of foreign investment and aid, testing for longterm effects, addressing potential luminosity-based measurement errors, and replacing the dependent variable with alternative inequality measures. We further explore the underlying mechanisms and find that China's OFDI leads to significant increases in industrial output, manufacturing value-added, and industrial employment in host countries, thereby creating more job opportunities for low-skilled workers. To capture potential spillover effects, we exploit the establishment of overseas Chinese Economic and Trade Cooperation Zones as an additional source of variation. Our findings provide new empirical evidence to inform debates on economic globalization and income inequality. By applying the lens of productive accumulation,this study sheds light on the distinctive macro-patterns and capital circulation logic underpinning China's real-sector investments abroad, and suggests that China's OFDI contributes in a unique way to the building of a shared future for humanity

    As an important link connecting domestic and international markets and an important driving force for regional and even global economic growth, "the Belt and Road" initiative has laid a solid foundation for economic and trade cooperation between China and the co building countries. This paper constructs a measurement index of China's value chain embeddedness from the industry level, and depicts it from the perspective of forward and backward linkages. On the basis of statistical research on key industries in various countries, this paper evaluates the impact of "the Belt and Road" initiative on the integration of countries into China's value chain. The research results show that "the Belt and Road" initiative has significantly promoted the integration of co-construction countries into China's value chain, and has played a role through three channels:The synergy effect of connectivity, the technology innovation driving effect and the complementary advantage release effect.The heterogeneity analysis shows that "the Belt and Road" initiative has promoted the backward integration of manufacturing industries into China's value chain, mainly in labor-intensive and knowledge-intensive manufacturing industries. The research on key industries found that "the Belt and Road" initiative can promote the integration of domestic key industries and export key industries into China's value chain as a whole, but there are limitations for non China oriented export key industries. This article also explores the economic and trade benefits of integrating into the China's value chain, and finds that it has a significant promoting effect on the economic growth, trade status improvement, and global value chain stability of jointly built countries. The research results of this paper provide empirical evidence for "the Belt and Road" initiative to help build a high-level opening up pattern, and provide theoretical reference for further promoting the value chain cooperation between China and the co construction countries.

    Amid the shocks of increasingly uncertain U.S. trade policies, there is an urgent need to explore strategies for enhancing the resilience of supply chain relationships between Chinese suppliers and U.S. customers. This paper constructs a heterogeneous firm trade model incorporating "supplier-customer" relationship characteristics and digital transformation to investigate the impact of trade policy shocks on the resilience of China-US supply chain relationships, as well as the role and mechanisms of digital transformation in enhancing this resilience under such shocks. The results indicate that trade policy shocks significantly reduce the resilience of China-US supply chain relationships, while digital transformation helps mitigate this negative impact. Specifically, digital transformation alleviates the negative impact of trade policy shocks by reducing the maintenance costs of supply relationships and the operating costs of suppliers, while increasing the disruption costs of supply relationships. Furthermore, when the empowerment levels of "internal circulation" and "going global" are higher, China-US supply chain relationships exhibit greater resilience against trade policy shocks, and the positive effect of digital transformation on enhancing this resilience is amplified. Further analysis reveals that trade policy shocks prompt the relocation of existing China-US supply chain relationships to Asian, American, and European countries. Under the influence of digital transformation, supply chain cooperation between China and ASEAN, as well as Belt and Road Initiative countries, is further promoted. This paper highlights the critical importance of digital transformation for the resilience of China-US supply chain relationships amid escalating trade policy shocks, aiming to provide policy recommendations for China to strengthen its supply chain resilience in the face of such shocks.

    Achieving comprehensive industrial interconnection among people, machines, and objects, promoting the optimization of resource factors and industrial chain collaboration, is key to cultivating and strengthening new productive forces and building a new dual-circulation development pattern. This paper constructs a quasi-natural experiment based on industrial internet pilot demonstration projects and employs a multi-period difference-in-differences approach to quantitatively assess the comprehensive impact of industrial internet on corporate export behavior. Findings indicate that industrial internet significantly drives increases in both export scale and export intensity. These conclusions remain robust after incorporating a series of stability tests, including endogeneity treatment, heterogeneity-of-effects tests, and placebo tests. Regarding the channels of influence, the industrial internet effectively empowers export behavior by optimizing supply chains, enhancing production efficiency, and precisely matching customer demands. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the industrial internet exerts a stronger promotional effect on export behavior for enterprises located in regions with well-developed digital infrastructure, those with higher levels of corporate governance, and technology-intensive firms. Furthermore, focusing on the "chain" connectivity effect within industrial chains, the industrial internet effectively stimulates the expansion of export scale and intensity for both upstream suppliers and downstream customer enterprises. Finally, the study confirms that the industrial internet significantly reduces export volatility, thereby enhancing corporate export resilience. By examining the importance of industrial internet development from the perspective of embedding in the global economic cycle, this research provides valuable insights and empirical evidence for achieving steady progress in foreign trade and accelerating the development of a trade powerhouse.