Narrow Results

China’s growing economy contributes significantly to worldwide consumption. Economic rebalancing promises opportunities for manufacturing exporters, and that can weaken commodity demand in the long term. China exerts increasing influence on emerging countries through trade, investment, and ideas. China faces several important economic issues that can hinder future development, including distortive economic policies that have evolved into an overreliance on fixed investment and exports for economic growth, government assistance for state-owned businesses, and a weak banking system. Building an information infrastructure and enhancing the technical level and application capability of big data (BD) remain under the purview of the Chinese Government. Artificial intelligence (AI)-based hybrid artificial neural network (HANN) might boost total factor productivity by a large margin, influencing many sectors in China in ways that official statistics would miss, including changes to the labor market, investment patterns, and overall productivity. Hence, BD-HANN has a coefficient of variation, quantity graph analysis, standard deviation, and entropy index, some of the most conventional quantitative research tools used to examine disparities in regional economic growth. According to the neoclassical growth model, regions with lower starting values of the capital-labor ratio anticipate higher per capita income growth rates. Thus, poor areas will grow faster than rich ones, assuming that the only difference between regional economies is the level of their initial stock of capital.

The swift advancement of digital technology has rendered the digital transformation of firms a crucial element propelling innovation and growth within the pharmaceutical industry. This study seeks to explore the influence of digital technology, digital strategy, digital leadership, and digital innovation on the digital transformation of Chinese pharmaceutical firms, along with a detailed analysis of digital innovation’s role in this process. The study background demonstrates that digital transformation substantially influences the operational efficiency and market competitiveness of pharmaceutical firms. This study proposes the following research questions: How do digital technology, digital strategy, and digital leadership affect the digital transformation of Chinese pharmaceutical firms? What role does digital innovation play in this process? Quantitative methods are employed to perform statistical analysis on the gathered data by developing structural equation models to validate research hypotheses. Research indicates that digital technology, digital strategy, and digital leadership significantly enhance the digital transformation of pharmaceutical firms, with digital innovation serving a mediating role. This study indicates that digital innovation is a crucial catalyst for the digital transformation of Chinese pharmaceutical firms. Firms must prioritize the use of digital technology, the development of digital strategies, and the enhancement of digital leadership to facilitate digital transformation. This study holds both theoretical and practical significance for advancing the digital transformation of Chinese pharmaceutical firms.

Despite empirical evidence that individuals form their fertility preferences by observing social norms and interactions in their environments, the exact impact of these peer effects remains unclear. We thus use data from the 2014 and 2016 China Labor-force Dynamics Survey to investigate the association between community-level peer effects and fertility preferences among Chinese women aged 18–49. Whereas our baseline results indicate that 11.96% of these women would prefer 1 or no children, 74.1% would like 2 children and 13.93% would prefer 3 or more children. A one unit increase in community-level peer fertility reduces the preference of wanting only one child by 14.3%, whereas it increases the probability of preferring three children by 9.3% and four or more children by 4.8%. Hence, overall, we find a relatively strong peer effect on individual fertility preferences in communities characterized by generally low fertility rates, which provide support for the role of social norms in the fertility choices of reproductive-aged Chinese women.

Food safety concerns have become increasingly important challenge for agricultural trade. Sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures are often considered as major non-tariff trade barriers, which have surged rapidly over the recent decade. This study systematically investigates the impact of China’s SPS measures on Thai fruit exports. The panel dataset is constructed with 17 Thai fruit items for the sample period 2000–2018. Gravity equations are estimated to quantify the trade effects of SPS measures on the value of fruit exports from Thailand to China. The results from the sectoral analysis reveal that the restrictiveness of SPS measures has a positive and substantial effect on export volumes. This suggests that non-arbitrary and informative SPS requirements imposed by a large importing country would help facilitate the agricultural trade.

This study analyzes the effects of industrial revitalization in developed countries on China’s industrial exports. Using a rich panel dataset and a difference-in-difference method, I find empirical evidence consistent with the hypothesis that industrial revitalization policies in developed countries discourage China’s industrial exports, and these effects have become more apparent over time. This finding is robust to other proxy variables for industrial revitalization policies and robustness checks.

Based on the characteristics of financial exclusion and income gap, this paper attempted to elucidate the fluctuation of China’s consumption rate through the mechanism of financial availability of low-income residents and its influence on household consumption in the reform era. The study showed that improving financial availability affects the consumption rate by increasing investment opportunities for low-income earners who can adjust the portfolio of composition. Meanwhile, this effect is affected by the income gap which plays a “threshold” role in the relationship between financial availability and consumption rate. Therefore, inclusive finance development must be adapted to economic development in order to prevent “too much finance”.

This paper examines the international effects of Chinese policy uncertainty shock. Using the factor-augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR) model which can accommodate several economic variables from multiple countries, we model Chinese policy uncertainty jointly with three latent factors extracted from industrial production index, import value and export value. The results reveal that the change of one standard deviation of Chinese economic policy uncertainty (EPU) has a negative interference effect on global trade markets and industrial production, and so does the fiscal policy uncertainty (FPU). However, the impact of Chinese trade policy and monetary policy on three latent factors is not statistically significant. A country-level analysis shows that due to the heterogeneity of the economic structure and trade structure of each economy, countries have different responses to the uncertainty of Chinese economic policy. In particular, the extent to which imports and exports of each economy are affected is asymmetric.

This paper uses systematic panel data methods to scrutinize the impact of China’s foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth in eight Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries from 2004 to 2018. The findings indicate a statistically significant causal association between these countries’ economic growth and Chinese investment, which shows that China’s FDI is not a cause but rather a result of the economic expansion. Specifically, the results show that there was a causal chain running from fixed capital to Chinese FDI, through trade openness, in the relatively wealthier ASEAN countries; also, there was a causal chain running from economic growth to Chinese FDI, through trade openness, in relatively poorer ASEAN countries.

This paper estimates how land expropriation affects household consumption and savings rate using a nationally representative household data from China. We argue that land expropriation is likely to be random across households within the same village. We find that land expropriation has positive and statistically significant effects on per capita household consumption and savings rate. The effects on consumption of durable goods and on savings rate, however, weaken and become insignificant over time.

This paper examined the relationship between Chinese outward foreign direct investment (FDI) and the industrial sector’s performance represented by the industrial sector’s contribution to the gross domestic product for a sample of 49 African countries between 2003 and 2019. The study also examined the moderating effects of Chinese FDI on Africa’s industrial performance. We employed panel fixed-effects and panel-corrected standard errors models to control for country heterogeneities and serial correlation in the disturbance terms, usually present in panel data and may bias the estimates. The results showed that Chinese FDI has moderating effects on industrial performance through industrial employment and natural resources. We also found a significant positive relationship between contemporaneous Chinese FDI and industrial performance, suggesting that Chinese FDI of a given year positively affects the same year’s industrial performance. The study further revealed lingering effects of Chinese FDI on industrial performance, implying the favorable impact of Chinese FDI on industrial performance in a given year may not be immediate. Policymakers are advised to improve the absorptive capacities of industrial workers and direct Chinese FDI towards transforming natural resources into industrial goods.

We provide a review and empirical study on the exchange rate system reform in China. In the initial stage of the reform the Chinese central bank PBoC’s implicit promise of gradual appreciation helped to contain the appreciation rate and volatility of the renminbi. Subsequently, under US pressure for faster appreciation and hence the PBoC’s moderate violation of the implicit promise, there was a significant rise in the appreciation rate and the volatility of the renminbi. The moderate violation deteriorated further, forming a vicious cycle of speculative flows and faster exchange rate changes. Upon the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008, the threatening appreciation and volatility alleviated when the PBoC returned to the implicit stance of gradual appreciation or stable renminbi. We found that in the first ten years of the reform the PBoC did not shift its monitoring target from the RMB–USD rate to the nominal effective exchange rate. This may be one of the underlying causes of the renminbi crisis in 2015.

Digital economy development is important for promoting industrial upgrades and high-quality economic growth. As excessive carbon emissions are a threat to sustainable economic growth, whether digital economy development contributes to reducing carbon emission intensity has gained attention. This study employs the fixed effects model and spatial Dubin model to examine the effect of digital economy development in 275 cities in China on the reduction of carbon emissions intensity. The results show effectiveness in reducing carbon intensity with a spatial spillover effect to neighboring areas. Urban economic primacy plays a positive modulating role in carbon reduction. Policy implications are discussed.

Pricing the natural capital is very critical for the achievement of carbon neutrality. This paper uses the Shephard input distance function to derive the shadow price of natural capital under regulatory constraints, which corrects the biased estimates without these constraints of previous studies. We relax the assumption of cost-minimizing behavior at market price and incorporate the price inefficiency in our model. This model is applied to the Chinese provincial dataset from 2004 to 2017. We observe that the average shadow prices of mineral, water, woodland and forest are 391CNY/metric tons of coal equivalent (tce), 0.13CNY/m³, 772CNY/hm² and 344CNY/hm², respectively. For the dynamic effect, the shadow prices of natural capital rise sharply between 2004 and 2014. By testing the price efficiency, we demonstrate that regulatory constraints have an impact on shadow prices of natural capital in practice.

Coordinating ecological protection and economic development is a dilemma for resource-based cities to achieve sustainable development. This paper is the first study to estimate the causal impact of sustainable development planning on natural capital. We take the release of the Sustainable Development Plan for Resource-based Cities (SDPRC) as an exogenous shock and find that the SDPRC significantly increases the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) in resource-based counties. Heterogeneous analyses suggest that the impact is larger in counties with better economic performance, larger scale, and located in western and northeastern regions. Moreover, the effects of the SDPRC in different types of counties on natural capital are heterogeneous. This paper underscores the importance of policies aiming for promoting sustainable development, which increases natural capital and coordinates economic development and ecological protection in resource-based counties.

This study pioneers in quantitatively evaluating policies and commercial strategies of China to facilitate its coal-to-gas transition, concerning their impacts on energy security, especially for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) import dependency and cost-effectiveness. An econometric approach is developed to examine the impacts of natural gas domestic production expansions, pipeline import expansions, and LNG price volatilities on LNG import. Empirical evidence reveals two challenges: (1) insufficient growth in domestic gas production to substitute and reduce import volumes via LNG shipping; (2) under increased import prices from major spot markets, LNG import volumes continued increasing, which implies cost ineffectiveness.

Previous studies have not paid much attention to the heterogeneous effects of air pollution on subjective well-being. By matching the 2018 China Labor-Force Dynamics Survey data (CLDS2018) with urban air pollution data, we empirically examine the impact of air pollution on subjective well-being across pollution levels, income levels, gender, age, education as well as city size and region. Empirical analysis shows that an increase in air pollution has a negative and statistically significant impact on the well-being and the effect varies considerably across pollution levels, income levels, age, gender, education level, city size and region. Re-estimation using air pollution data released by the US embassy in China shows that the empirical results presented in this paper are robust. After accounting for potential endogeneity, PM2.5 continues to have a significant negative impact on the well-being of residents. Air pollution can affect an individual’s mental health, social networks and economic status, which in turn affects their subjective well-being. Our analysis shows that air pollution is an important contributor to the Easterlin paradox, and (in the process of air pollution control) attention needs to be paid to both individual heterogeneity and urban differences.

Environmental pollution has become a serious problem in the past decades, especially in developing countries with rapid economic growth. As the world’s largest developing country with incredible speed of development, China provides a unique perspective to investigate the productivity effect of environmental regulations. The main finding of this study supports the Porter hypothesis, that stricter environmental regulations significantly promote productivity in China. We also explore three potential impact channels leading to this productivity improvement, including rising technical innovation, optimizing financial management and reducing resource misallocation. The latter two mechanisms are rarely discussed in relevant studies. However, these two additional effects are of great importance since they can help establish a more comprehensive market environment and a more optimized industrial structure, especially in developing countries. Overall, this study proves that China has achieved dual goals of protecting the environment and economic growth by implementing stricter environmental regulations, which is worthy of reference for other developing countries facing similar problems.

The adoption of industrial robots has gradually become popular around the world. This paper investigates the impact of robot adoption on firm employment using Chinese firm-level Employer-Employee Survey data. Instrumental variables are used to address the potential endogeneity of robot adoption. The results show that robot adoption increases firm total employment, both low-skilled employment and high-skilled employment. The effects are more substantial among the firms in the low-tech industries and small- and micro-sized firms. Mechanism analysis shows that the firms’ production efficiency and scale are the possible channels through which robot adoption increases firm employment. Our analysis implies that firms adopting robots will increase employment, which has great implications for policymakers and enterprises to make decisions on robot adoption in developing countries.

This paper studies the impact of the transfer payment policy for national key ecological functional areas (TPPNKEFA) on economic growth. As the most representative and extensive vertical ecological compensation policy in China, the TPPNKEFA plays an important role in protecting and restoring natural capital. Using the county-level TPPNKEFA data disclosed according to the application, we constructed a multi-stage DID model to identify the economic growth effect of TPPNKEFA. The results show that TPPNKEFA effectively improves the level of county economic development, which is more prominent in the counties located in the central and western regions, water conservation functional areas, low economic development level, large fiscal gap, and the counties where TPPNKEFA has been implemented for a long time. A mechanism analysis shows that industrial ecologization and ecological industrialization are important paths. The extension analysis shows that the original intention of TPPNKEFA to promote the restoration of natural capital and the improvement of people’s livelihoods has been well implemented. This study provides important evidence to support efforts to protect and restore natural capital, highlighting the need for governments to invest in natural capital and thus facilitate the transition to a low-carbon economy.

This study employs fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to explore factors influencing the development of the big data industry in 31 provinces and municipalities in China. By analyzing eight representative variables across four dimensions—new infrastructure construction, data resources and applications, government services, and resource input—the study aims to uncover configurations and pathways that affect industry growth. The results reveal four effective strategies: combining infrastructure with data application, integrating government services with data application, coupling infrastructure with resource investment, and focusing solely on government services. Core variables such as optical cable length, policy environment, and service environment require governmental intervention to foster development. Therefore, continuous enhancement of new infrastructure construction, supporting the development of small and medium-sized Enterprises in big data, strengthening the big data industry and government service environment, and increasing investments in talent and capital are recommended to drive industry progression.