China’s economy has a solid foundation, many advantages, strong resilience, and great potential. The supporting conditions and fundamental trend for its long-term sound development remain unchanged. However, it also faces major challenges, externally from suppression by the United States and the West, and internally from population decline, insufficient effective demand, and imbalanced development. In addition to adopting general guidelines and policy measures, it is necessary to formulate unconventional strategies based on China’s real advantages and to solve problems by looking beyond the problems themselves: Carry out robust supportive policies for fertility, so as to stabilize the number of newborns, turn population growth from negative to positive, and address the lack of development momentum and confidence caused by sustained negative population growth; coordinating economic and social policies to forcefully promote the recovery of the real estate market in central cities, thereby boosting consumption and investment demand; establishing a mechanism through which the people as a whole share the returns on state-owned assets, creating a common pension, and building a uniquely Chinese mixed pension system, which would not only substantially narrow the excessively large benefit gaps among different basic old-age insurance schemes—an important manifestation of imbalanced development—but also expand domestic demand and spur economic growth. By adopting such unconventional strategies to overcome the major obstacles to China’s economic and social development, upholding the expansion of domestic demand as a strategic basis, and boosting the dynamism and reliability of the domestic economy, China can maintain favorable long-term expectations and development momentum.

Since the era of the Second International, Marxist economics has been developing the theory of international unequal exchange. In the 1960s, Emmanuel published Unequal Exchange, in which he proposed a novel theory based on the theory of price of production. Premised on the international immobility of labor, his work explored the formation mechanism of international production prices and the resulting international transfer of value. Emmanuel’s theory has sparked extensive debates and given rise to some new research. So far, the study of unequal exchange based on production prices has become the mainstream in the literature. Despite their respective contributions, these theories have the following weaknesses. First, they tend to equate unequal exchange with value transfer, while neglecting the exploration of the differences between them. Second, they interpret unequal exchange merely on the basis of production price, without deeply exploring the intrinsic connection between unequal exchange and monopoly which is a structural feature of modern capitalist economies. Further development of the theory of unequal exchange requires reflection on what unequal exchange is, and a clear definition of the criteria for identifying unequal exchange.

China’s economic development has achieved remarkable results, yet its status as a developing country has become a focal point of international debate. Existing classification methods for developing countries, represented by per capita Gross National Income (GNI), exhibit significant limitations. The relative levels and sources of differences of GNI and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) reflect a nation’s factor competitiveness and structural characteristics, which jointly determine its economic development level. This study innovatively proposes a theoretical framework of “structural transformation of factor competitiveness,” offering a dynamic analytical paradigm for evaluating developing country status within the global division of labor. By combining transnational panel data with case studies, this paper reassesses China’s developing country status. The findings reveal: (1) Long-term net inflows of factor income driven by capital factor competitiveness serve as the core indicator for transitioning from a developing to a developed country. Despite fluctuations in China’s capital competitiveness, its total factor income remains in a persistent net outflow state, indicating an incomplete transition. (2) A negative feedback loop between foreign capital dependency and insufficient domestic capital accumulation traps developing countries in a “factor competitiveness structure trap,” hindering effective enhancement of capital competitiveness. Although China’s per capita capital stock has significantly increased, it still lags behind developed countries at comparable stages. (3) As trade scales expand, factor income shares rise in developed countries but decline in developing ones. Despite being the world’s largest goods trader, China’s factor income share remains substantially lower than that of developed economies. This study elucidates the core challenges faced by developing countries in transitioning to developed status under economic globalization, emphasizing the critical role of synergizing capital accumulation with technological innovation, reinvesting foreign capital profits, promoting industrial upgrading along the value chain, and constructing autonomous factor circulation networks to overcome developmental bottlenecks.

Clarifying the impact of the information effect of monetary policy is crucial to improving the effectiveness of monetary policy. This paper constructs a DSGE model incorporating credit inertia and the information effect of monetary policy, theoretically reveals the moderating role of long-term bank-firm credit relationships on the information effect of monetary policy, and conducts an empirical test using bank credit line data of Chinese listed enterprises. The results show that a positive information effect of monetary policy promotes the growth of corporate credit; bank-firm credit inertia restrains this effect and exerts a negative moderating effect. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that such restraining effect is more pronounced among smaller banks with weaker risk-bearing capacity, as well as among private enterprises and enterprises with lower financing constraints. The conclusions of this paper provide theoretical support and empirical evidence for further enhancing the effectiveness of monetary policy.

Under the context of China’s new development paradigm, the construction of a unified national market provides substantial institutional guarantees for dismantling market access barriers and fostering a fair business environment. Evaluating its impact on the high-quality development of private enterprises is of significant practical relevance. Using panel data from Chinese privately listed firms and prefecture-level cities from 2005 to 2022, this paper empirically examines the influence of unified national market building on the total factor productivity (TFP) of private enterprises. The findings indicate that the development of a unified national market significantly enhances the TFP of private firms. Specifically, the removal of local protectionism, the innovation effect, and the regional coordination effect serve as the primary channels through which the unified national market boosts private firms’ TFP. The effect is more pronounced among non-exporting firms, enterprises lagging in digital transformation, labor-intensive industries, as well as in cities outside major urban clusters, with lower population density, and less healthy government-business relations. Further analysis reveals that urban spatial connectivity leads to positive spillover effects, whereby the advancement of the unified national market in neighboring regions also improves local private firms’ TFP. This study provides empirical evidence and practical insights for promoting the growth and strengthening of the private economy.

This paper examines the effect of UI on corporate innovation. The findings reveal that UI promotes corporate innovation, primarily by stimulating exploratory innovation, while its effect on exploitative innovation is not significant. Mechanism analysis indicates that UI enhances firms’ innovation investment—particularly in higher-risk exploratory innovation—through a cash flow effect and a labor allocation effect. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the innovation-promoting effect of UI is more pronounced in firms with better employee care. Furthermore, UI not only at the surface level increases innovation output but also strengthens firms’ independent and breakthrough innovation capabilities. This study contributes to the literature on labor market institutions and innovation.

As a vital mechanism for interregional trade, government cross-regional procurement plays a significant role in establishing a unified national market. However, limited research has explored how market competition environments influence this practice. Utilizing Chinese government procurement order data from 2015 to 2022, this study examines the impact of market competition fairness on cross-regional procurement through dual lenses of inter-provincial and intra-regional municipal transactions. The findings reveal that fair market competition significantly promotes inter-provincial procurement but shows no substantial effect on intra-provincial cross-city procurement. These conclusions remain robust after addressing endogeneity concerns. Further analysis demonstrates that local governments’ environmental objectives and economic growth target constraints weaken the positive correlation between market competition fairness and inter-provincial procurement. This research not only provides novel theoretical insights into government cross-regional trading behaviors but also elucidates the implementation pathways for breaking administrative barriers and refining competition policies to facilitate interregional trade liberalization and domestic market integration. The study offers critical implications for advancing factor marketization reforms in the new era.

Making breakthroughs in key core technology is not only a key measure for high-level scientific and technological self-reliance and self-improvement, but also an effective way to enhance the international competitiveness of a country under high-level opening-up. Based on the panel data of China’s A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2023, this paper investigates the impact of institutional opening-up on enterprises’ key core technology breakthroughs and its mechanism by constructing a staggered difference-in-differences model. The study finds that institutional opening-up has significantly promoted enterprises to achieve breakthroughs in key core technology, which is realized by reducing institutional transaction costs, increasing the proportion of patient capital, enhancing the aggregation of digital resources and improving the level of industry-university-research collaborative innovation. Further analysis shows that the effect of institutional opening-up on key core technology breakthroughs is different in terms of enterprise attributes and external environment. At the same time, the government innovation subsidy and the local digital economy development level strengthen the positive effect of institutional opening-up. In addition, institutional opening-up promotes some enterprises to take the lead in achieving key core technology breakthroughs of “point” and then drives other enterprises in the same city and industry to achieve key core technology breakthroughs of “area”, and gradually shifting from “follower” to “leader” in international technical standards.

Can the geographical proximity of cities within a urban cluster to the knowledge pool of technological innovation in the central city effectively translate into a driving force for advancing their modern industrial systems? This study empirically examines the impact of technological innovation in central cities on the development of modern industrial systems in city clusters, grounded in the theoretical framework of knowledge spillover economics. Evidence reveals that knowledge spillovers from central cities’ technological innovation accelerate inter-city technology transfer and collaboration, mitigate technological development imbalances within the cluster, and alleviate technological rigidity constraints. Consequently, this drives the modernization of industrial systems in non-central cities, particularly within clusters characterized by optimized development gradients and those aligned with the inland-oriented national strategy. Enhancing digital infrastructure, strengthening judicial protection of intellectual property rights, increasing government innovation preferences, and elevating fiscal decentralization levels can effectively amplify the positive effects of central cities’ technological innovation. These findings offer practical insights for government departments in advancing innovation-driven development strategies.

This paper examines how regional digital infrastructure upgrades (exemplified by smart-city initiatives) shape firms’ supply-chain trade from a production-network perspective. The results show that digital infrastructure significantly boosts trade activity, with policy effects propagating downstream along the production network. Mechanism analysis shows that digitalization enhances internal management efficiency, fosters the use of digital platforms for information integration, and improves firms’ network centrality, thereby strengthening search and matching efficiency and ultimately stimulating trade growth. The findings offer micro-level evidence on how digital infrastructure supports industrial upgrading at the regional (especially county and district) level and provide a conceptual framework for government-firm interaction in digital transformation, with implications for advancing high-quality domestic circulation.

Accelerating the development of the digital economy to establish China as a technologically advanced nation constitutes a strategic imperative for high-quality development. This study investigates the intrinsic relationship between the digital economy and technological innovation. Based on big data from industrial and commercial registrations, we measure digital economy agglomeration and examine its mechanisms on regional enterprise innovation. Empirical results demonstrate that digital economy agglomeration significantly promotes enterprise innovation output. Mechanism analysis reveals that knowledge spillover effects and cost-saving effects serve as primary channels through which agglomeration fosters innovation. The innovation-enhancing effect is more pronounced for smaller enterprises, non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs), and those operating in regions with lower market segmentation. This research validates the critical value of digital economy development and agglomeration from an innovation perspective, offering significant policy implications for enhancing, optimizing, and expanding the digital economy while advancing innovation-driven development.

This paper constructs a multi-sector endogenous growth model with a micro foundation of the data value chain. Theoretically, it reveals how data, through the synergistic effects of three mechanisms—accumulation of factors, promotion of technological progress, and driving of economic structural transformation, multiplies the effect on economic growth. The study finds that: (1) the synergistic interplay of the three mechanisms contributes approximately 1.73 percentage points of additional growth rate, accounting for 31.1% of the total endogenous growth dynamics, thereby constituting a significant output synergistic multiplier result; and (2) among individual mechanisms, structural transformation (29.1%) and technological progress (21.8%) are the primary drivers, yet relying solely on any single mechanism cannot explain the high-speed growth of China’s digital economy; the positive feedback loop among the mechanisms is key. This provides a new theoretical perspective and quantitative basis for understanding the growth dynamics of China’s digital economy and for formulating relevant policies.

This article introduces population structure factors into a two-sector neoclassical non-balanced growth model, and theoretically demonstrates the impact of ageing population structure on the transformation of industrial structure to service-oriented and economic “structural deceleration” through the mechanism of demand transfer. Secondly, empirical research based on panel data from 287 prefecture level and above cities in China from 2003 to 2020 shows that for every 1% increase in the proportion of urban residents aged 65 and above, the degree of industrial structure servitization will increase by 0.025 units, leading to a decrease of 0.445 percentage points in the growth rate of per capita real GDP. After decomposing the effects of different demographic factors, we find that the aging of the urban registered residence population also leads to economic slowdown by promoting the service-oriented transformation of industrial structure; population inflow can slow down the process of service-oriented transformation of urban industrial structure, thereby promoting its economic growth, and has a certain diluting effect on the impact of the service-oriented transformation of industrial structure and economic slowdown caused by the aging of the registered residence population. Further analysis also shows that the sustained improvement of productivity growth in the service industry and the transformation and upgrading of the internal life service industry to productive service industry can help weaken the “structural slowdown” impact of the service-oriented transformation of the industrial structure; and accelerate the accumulation of human capital to achieve the transformation from “population dividend” to “talent dividend”, which can also alleviate the negative impact of population aging on economic growth. The conclusion of this article can provide certain experience and reference for China to adapt to the current trend of population s