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This study examines how government subsidies influence ESG performance in China's new energy sector, focusing on organizational mechanisms and governance conditions determining policy effectiveness. Understanding these transmission mechanisms is critical as governments worldwide deploy industrial policies to accelerate sustainable transitions, yet existing theories developed in Western market economies may not adequately explain policy outcomes in state-influenced institutional contexts. Using panel data from firm-year observations across Chinese listed firms, we test whether financing-investment maturity mismatch (SFLI) mediates the subsidy-ESG relationship and how ownership concentration and board independence moderate these effects. Our empirical strategy employs two-way fixed effects models, instrumental variable approaches, and propensity score matching to address endogeneity concerns. Results show subsidies significantly enhance ESG performance. However, SFLI shows no mediating effects, suggesting subsidies operate through institutional signaling and administrative coordination rather than financial constraint alleviation. This null mediation result proves theoretically informative, revealing that institutional mechanisms systematically outweigh resource-based channels in China's well-developed green finance environment. Contrary to agency theory predictions, ownership concentration enhances subsidy effectiveness while board independence reduces it. Comprehensive heterogeneity analyses reveal SOE subsidy effects are twice as large as POE effects, validating distinct mechanisms: administrative mandate compliance for SOEs versus strategic signaling for POEs. The positive interaction between subsidies and SOE status confirms that political accountability drives differential policy responsiveness across ownership types. Effects are strongest for environmental outcomes and exhibit diminishing returns at high subsidy levels. Regional analyses show subsidy effectiveness varies substantially with local fiscal capacity and regulatory intensity, with effects in high-capacity regions multiple times larger than in low-capacity regions. These findings offer important implications for policymakers and corporate managers. For policymakers, the evidence suggests that subsidy effectiveness depends more on institutional design and monitoring quality than on subsidy magnitude, indicating that smaller, well-targeted subsidies with strong oversight mechanisms may outperform large transfers with limited accountability. For firms with concentrated ownership structures, subsidies prove particularly effective instruments for ESG improvements, while those with highly independent boards may require additional support to overcome procedural delays.

There have been many changes since China introduced the capitalist market economy, and the ownership structure of companies has changed significantly, but there are still a number of unique systems that are applied only to Chinese companies due to their cultural, environmental, and legal specificity. Unlike companies under the capitalist market economy, Chinese companies have quite different levels of marketization in 31 provinces (Wang et al., 2021). Therefore, it is important to identify the impact of regional marketization level differences in China while explaining the impact on the earnings management behavior of Chinese companies. The purpose of this study is to identify the factors that influence the choice of two types of earnings management, namely accrual earnings management (AM) and real earnings management (RM), for Chinese companies. Since the effects of AM and RM on companies are different, it is a meaningful topic to investigate the use of the two earnings management in Chinese companies. First, we examined whether Chinese companies are generally using AM and RM complementarily or substitutionary as a means of earnings management. Second, it was examined how differences in the level of marketization by province affect the two earnings management behaviors. The result of analyzing 14,796 (firm-years) data listed on the Shenzhen and Shanghai Stock Exchanges in China for nine years from 2011 is as following. First, although the level of marketization in China has improved a lot, there are still differences in the level of marketization by region. Second, it was found that the overall earnings management behavior of listed Chinese companies was complementarily using AM and RM. Third, there was a difference in the earnings management behavior of Chinese listed companies according to the level of marketization by province, and it was confirmed that in regions with a high level of marketization, there is a tendency to move from AM which is relatively easy to detect to RM. These results indicate that although Chinese companies have recently undergone accounting system reforms, including split share structure reform (SSSREF), they still use AM, which is relatively easy to detect, and because the differences in marketization levels by region due to unnecessary government interventions, low administrative transparency, financial support systems applied to Chinese companies can also affect accounting practices in China, the results of this study are meaningful in suggesting that there is a need to raise the level of marketization to the companies in low-marketized provinces.

Despite the Civil Code’s patient-centered design, bedside practice reveals a persistent threefold imbalance. First, family members’ views often override the patient’s expressed choices, particularly under time pressure and amid fragmented documentation. Second, designated proxies —including appointees and voluntary guardians—are routinely sidelined in operations, reversing the intended priority of application. Third, the operational triggers for “incapacity” and “ethically inadvisable disclosure” remain underspecified. Clinicians lack shared, auditable criteria for determining when capacity is absent, when disclosure would be harmful, and how those determinations should be recorded. This ambiguity invites discretionary drift, inconsistent notes, and gaps between consent, proxy activation, and ex post review. This study uses doctrinal interpretation in tandem with comparative analysis and close readings of two cases: the 2017 Yulin maternity case and the appellate decision in (2009) Xi Min Er Zhong Zi No. 46. On a unified terminology scaffold, it builds an operational model that links trigger criteria to the priority of application and, ultimately, to procedural safeguards. It then translates that model into an executable reform program spanning administrative coordination, hospital governance rules, information-system fields, tiered staff training, and metric-based evaluation. Illustrative data elements include a capacity-assessment timestamp, trigger rationale, and the proxy’s identity and legal basis. On the electronic health record (EHR) face sheet, new fields would include whether a proxy exists, evidence type/ID, scope of authority, validity period, proxy contacts, and the verifier and timestamp. Training sequences are matched to specific roles, and evaluation emphasizes timeliness and documentation completeness (process-oriented metrics) rather than clinical endpoints. Proportionality constrains risk: interventions are no more restrictive than necessary, with residual disputes channeled to calibrated ex post remedies. The analysis affirms the patient as the primary consent holder. A proxy may act only when decision-making capacity is demonstrably absent or disclosure is ethically inadvisable, and, in either case, no less restrictive alternative is available. In such cases, the hierarchy places the designated or appointed proxy (including a voluntary guardian) before the statutory next of kin. Substantively, the substituted-judgment standard prevails; where the patient’s likely wishes cannot be determined, the best-interests standard applies. Procedurally, a closed-loop safeguard is required: two-physician written assessments of capacity and “inadvisability, ” ethics committee review when criteria are met, and full documentation with time-bound ratification within 24–48 hours to regularize proxy activation. Taken together, this work converts abstract principles into a workable flow from inadvisability or incapacity to proxy activation. It grounds the primacy of the patient or a clearly designated proxy in publicly verifiable authorities, and reframes patient-rights protection as auditable hospital governance.

With the deepening of the "dual carbon" goal in China, green innovation plays an increasingly crucial role in promoting green and low-carbon development. The core purpose of green innovation is to promote the construction of ecological civilization, by reducing energy consumption, pollution emissions, and improving the ecological environment, thereby achieving harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. As a key component of the national innovation system, the enterprise innovation system plays a crucial role in enhancing the overall strength of China's green innovation. In 2011, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, together with the People's Bank of China and other departments, launched the "pilot project to promote the integration of science and technology with finance". The pilot aims to lay a practical foundation for the comprehensive promotion of technology finance work, create policy space, and accelerate the construction of a diversified, multi-level, and multi-channel technology investment and financing system. Can the implementation of pilot policies combining technology and finance become a new engine to incentivize green innovation in Chinese enterprises? Can this policy provide diversified green funding channels for Chinese enterprises, thereby stimulating their vitality and enthusiasm for green innovation? This study regards the 2011 technology and finance integration pilot policy as a quasi-natural experiment and uses data from China's A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2022 to examine the policy's effects and mechanisms on Chinese corporate green innovation through a difference-in-differences method. The findings are as follows: First, the technology-finance integration pilot policy significantly promotes Chinese corporate green innovation, a conclusion that remains robust across a series of robustness checks. Second, environmental information disclosure plays a key moderating role between the policy and green innovation. Third, heterogeneity analysis reveals that the policy’s effects are more pronounced in state-owned, high-tech, and low-pollution of Chinese enterprises. This article confirms the positive role of technology finance in promoting green innovation in enterprises, providing strong theoretical and empirical support for the promotion of technology finance combined with policies.

Resource-exhausted cities face the dual pressures of ecological degradation and economic stagnation, making the achievement of synergistic development between high-quality economic growth and ecological resilience a core issue for regional sustainability. To clarify their coordination dynamics and response mechanisms, this study examines typical resource-exhausted cities in China’s Northeast Old Industrial Base, this study adopts an integrated approach combining comprehensive evaluation model, coupling coordination model, and panel vector autoregression (P-VAR) to analyze the spatial differentiation characteristics, synergistic evolution pathways, and interactive response mechanisms of economic development quality and ecological resilience from 2000 to 2020. The results indicate that: (1) Resource-exhausted cities exhibited a three-stage growth pattern of “medium-high-low” in economic development quality, while ecological resilience underwent an evolution from initial suppression to subsequent enhancement. Their coupling coordination level improved from basic dissonance (0.462) to basic coordination (0.631). (2) Resource-exhausted cities exhibited a gradient pattern where economic development quality was led by “dual-core leadership from coastal and border cities, coupled with the collapse of single-resource-dependent cities”, whereas ecological resilience displayed a“high in the south, low in the north, and stronger in comprehensive cities than in industrial-mining cities”structure. The coupling coordination degree exhibited a north-south divergence with a trend toward polarization. (3) A dynamic asymmetric response exists between economic development quality and ecological resilience in resource-depleted cities. Economic shocks exert a significant negative effect on ecological resilience, while ecological resilience shocks only cause a short-term, marginal suppression of economic development quality. (4) A pronounced asymmetric interaction mechanism exists between economic development quality and ecological resilience in resource-depleted cities. Fluctuations in ecological resilience are primarily driven by its own inertia, whereas economic development quality is driven by endogenous factors. In response, solutions and strategies are initially proposed in three areas: addressing gaps in high-quality economic development, strengthening the ecological resilience network, and formulating differentiated policies.

The Korean film and television industry thrives on its global development mechanism and its innovative capacity for industry professionalism. At present, it has already secured a position as a global cultural hub. With the worldwide dissemination of the Korean Wave, China and South Korea, both situated within the East Asian Cultural Sphere, are deeply influenced by Confucian thought. In film and television art, the ethnic customs, lifestyles, and ethical concepts displayed in Korean productions often bear the profound imprint of traditional Confucian culture. Therefore, Korean films tend to evoke a stronger sense of resonance among Chinese audiences compared with films from other nations. This is attributed to the considerable similarities between its cultural roots and value system and those of Chinese culture (Chen, 2023). Moreover, as early as the initial stage of the Hallyu cultural export strategy, China, with its rapid economic growth and increasing emphasis on the cultural industry, demonstrated tremendous potential and global influence in the film and television sector. With its vast audience base and steadily increasing box office revenue, China has become a major force in the global film and television market. In addition to achieving remarkable success in the domestic market, China's film and television industry has gradually strengthened its capacity for international cooperation and import. Compared with European and American countries, the shared cultural attributes between China and South Korea enable Korean dramas to evoke stronger emotional resonance among Chinese audiences. Industry insiders generally believe that during the peak period from 2014 to 2016, Chinese video platforms easily spent more than several hundred million US dollars annually on purchasing Korean drama copyrights. However, in 2016, South Korea's deployment of the "THAAD system"1) triggered a geopolitical conflict between China and South Korea. Viewing the move as detrimental to its strategic security interests, China responded with an informal cultural control policy, namely the “Korean Wave Ban.”2) This policy resulted in a comprehensive restriction on Korean film and television content in the Chinese market, and Korean film and television projects involving Chinese investment and co-production were directly suspended and indefinitely shelved. The existing industrial cooperation mechanisms between the two countries were severed, forcing the Korean film and television industry to passively withdraw from the Chinese market, while joint venture film and television companies between China and South Korea suffered enormous economic losses. The timing of its removal constitutes a core uncertainty due to the absence of explicit provisions in the “Korean Wave Ban.” As of 2025, although the policy shows signs of easing (such as the partial resumption of cooperative projects), its future trajectory remains uncertain. In this context, summarizing the impact of the restriction policy on the Chinese and Korean film and television industries and the changes in their cooperation models is conducive to exploring and sustaining the development of bilateral industry collaboration. In the future, how to circumvent policy barriers through innovative models of cooperation while maintaining industrial interaction will become the core issue awaiting exploration for the Chinese and Korean film and television industries.

Vocational education is an essential component of the modern education system, aiming to cultivate highly skilled technical talents to meet the demands of economic and social development. However, in China, vocational education has long been influenced by social prejudice, resulting in relatively low social recognition. Although policies have increasingly supported vocational education, its public perception remains weak, especially among parents, students, and educators, where significant cognitive biases exist. These biases not only hinder the development of the vocational education system but also impede the overall optimization of the social talent structure. Therefore, enhancing the social recognition of vocational education has become an urgent issue. This study, drawing on social cognitive theory, explores the changes and underlying causes of public perceptions of vocational education in China after recent reforms. The research involved nine participants—teachers, parents, and students—from a regular high school in Anhui Province. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and field observations, and analyzed using Colaizzi’s seven-step method for thematic extraction. The analysis focused on three aspects: cognitive formation, transformation mechanisms, and social impact, and identified six core categories, including educational choice logic, family cultural capital, policy comprehension, and social image. Findings reveal that public perceptions of vocational education are profoundly shaped by structural factors such as family economic conditions and parents’ educational backgrounds. At the same time, external variables, such as policy publicity, school guidance, and employment prospects, also influence attitudes to a certain extent. Despite some improvement in acceptance among certain groups, traditional academic hierarchies, concerns about employment uncertainty, and unequal access to information remain key obstacles to changing social perceptions. To enhance the recognition of vocational education, this study proposes two practical suggestions: first, strengthen policy communication channels to improve parents’ and students’ understanding and trust in vocational education policies; second, reform teacher training mechanisms by integrating vocational education into daily teaching and career guidance systems, thereby reinforcing teachers’ roles as cognitive mediators and guiding students toward more diverse and rational educational choices. This study aims to provide both theoretical support and practical pathways for the development and improvement of vocational education.

The rapid advancement of big data and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is profoundly reshaping the global industrial landscape and human resource management practices. The wave of production automation, epitomized by Industry 4.0, has increasingly replaced traditional human labor with machine labor, enhancing production efficiency while also raising concerns about technological unemployment. AI has not only transformed production methods but may also fundamentally reshape the innovation process itself, making employees’ innovation capabilities and organizational commitment critical for maintaining workplace competitiveness in the intelligent era. At the same time, big data and AI technologies empower employees by enabling convenient access to information, facilitating skill acquisition, and supporting collaboration across time and space. These advancements provide employees with unprecedented opportunities to independently design and manage their work tasks. In this context, job crafting, defined as employees' proactive adjustments to their work tasks, methods, and relationships, has garnered growing attention from both scholars and practitioners. Job crafting not only enhances employees’ adaptability in response to technological changes but also enables them to leverage their strengths more effectively. By increasing work meaningfulness and job satisfaction, job crafting fosters greater work autonomy and a stronger sense of purpose. Through job crafting, employees gain higher levels of work autonomy, which in turn strengthens their sense of identity and belonging within the organization, ultimately enhancing their organizational commitment. Moreover, job crafting creates opportunities for exploration and experimentation, stimulating employees’ innovative potential and promoting innovative behavior. Notably, both organizational commitment and innovative behavior require deep psychological engagement, underscoring the importance of psychological mechanisms in this process. While prior research has predominantly focused on organizational factors such as leadership styles and organizational culture, there has been relatively limited exploration of individual psychological mechanisms. Psychological ownership may play a crucial mediating role in this relationship. Job crafting not only directly enhances employees’ organizational commitment and innovative behavior but also reinforces these positive effects by fostering a stronger sense of belonging and responsibility for their work. However, existing studies have primarily examined the direct effects of job crafting, with limited attention to the underlying psychological mechanisms. Building on this gap, this study presents the following key findings: (1) job crafting positively influences organizational commitment; (2) job crafting positively influences innovative behavior; (3) psychological ownership mediates the relationship between job crafting and organizational commitment; and (4) psychological ownership mediates the relationship between job crafting and innovative behavior. These findings highlight that, in the context of rapid technological change, job crafting not only facilitates employee adaptation but also generates greater organizational value. By examining the psychological mechanisms underlying job crafting, this study addresses a critical theoretical gap and provides practical insights for organizations seeking to develop more effective management strategies that simultaneously enhance both employee commitment and innovation performance.

In this thesis, the modern deconstruction of classical allusions as depicted in the 2023 Taiwanese film "The Pig, the Snake, and the Pigeon" is focused on, and the exploration of how the historical anecdote of "The Pig, the Snake, and the Pigeon" from the Jin Shu is utilized by the film as its narrative motif to reconstruct character images and traditional narrative structures is conducted, thereby revealing profound social metaphors and cultural critique (Fang Xuanling, 648/1974). The classical hero's tale of "removing evils" is reinterpreted within the context of modern society, and issues such as personal redemption, social order, and moral judgment are placed within a visual narrative interwoven with violence and fate. By beginning with an analysis of the historical prototype and the cultural transmission path of the "The Pig, the Snake, and the Pigeon" allusion, the reconstruction of the hero role and the imagery of the "three evils" by the film is then examined, with these elements being endowed with modern societal implications. Furthermore, the discussion of how violence, through the film's visual style, narrative rhythm, and religious symbolism, presents the tension of fatalism in a formalized and sensory cinematic language is conducted from the perspective of the aesthetics of violence. This violence is seen as a symbolic response to the mechanisms of social exclusion and a visual metaphor for the failure of individual self-redemption. Revealing how the ethical framework of classical narratives is integrated by the film with the spiritual dilemmas of contemporary society is tried to be realized in this research, with the traditional character archetype of "Zhou Chu" being transformed from a moral symbol into a modern individual's existential metaphor. Traditional value systems are re-examined by the film through formalized depictions of violence and a cyclical fate structure, presenting a contemporary expression of multiple themes such as good and evil, redemption, and social critique. Instead of being a mere reproduction of the classical hero narrative, "The Pig, the Snake, and the Pigeon" is an allegorical portrayal of reality: a ritualized imagery of violence and a narrative logic of cyclical fate are employed by the director to conduct a profound critique of modern society. Not only is the analysis of the film's narrative structure and visual expression deepened by this study, but the process of the reconstruction of classical narratives within the language of modern cinema is also demonstrated. As a dialogue space between classical culture and contemporary society, new insights into the continuation and transformation of traditional spirit in the modern context are offered by the film's visual practice. Additionally, a new theoretical perspective on the regeneration mechanism of traditional culture in modern imagery is provided, thereby offering a methodological reference for subsequent related research.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly penetrating the field of language education. This development has opened new avenues for addressing a longstanding challenge in university-level Chinese vocabulary instruction, namely abundant input coupled with insufficient output and weak transferability. Adopting a design-based rather than purely empirical approach, this study focuses on Korean university students majoring in Chinese at the HSK 3–4 proficiency level and proposes an integrated AI-enhanced picture book vocabulary teaching model. The model is grounded in research on AI-assisted vocabulary learning, task-based vocabulary instruction, and multimodal and generative learning theories. Unlike many existing studies that concentrate on early literacy or AI-assisted writing in English, this study targets L2 Chinese vocabulary learning in higher education. Centered on themes such as traditional Chinese festivals, the tasks guide learners to create audio picture books using tools like ChatGPT, AI image generators, and text-to-speech software. The model combines traditional vocabulary explanation with a spiral task cycle comprising five stages: input, application, multimodal output, feedback, and internalization. To minimize over-reliance on AI-generated content and highlight learners’ authentic linguistic efforts, a comprehensive rubric and a “Language Effort Rating Form” are developed and employed. These tools integrate product-oriented and process-focused assessment approaches, thereby making learners’ language investment and revision processes visible. The study then analyzes the model’s feasibility from three dimensions: alignment with teaching objectives, technological accessibility, and teacher–learner readiness. It further provides a detailed lesson plan for the “Dragon Boat Festival (Duanwu Festival)” unit, which serves to illustrate classroom implementation procedures and task workflows. The analysis indicates that the model is highly practical under current university teaching conditions and holds significant potential for broader application. As a conceptual and design-oriented study, it offers a replicable classroom paradigm and design framework for integrating generative AI into vocabulary instruction, while also outlining clear directions for future quasi-experimental studies and classroom-based research.

This study examines the phenomenon of "social death" experienced by individuals living with HIV/AIDS in contemporary Chinese society through an analysis of Gu Changwei's film "The Most Beloved". It demonstrates that this process is not simply a product of external social exclusion, but a dual-dimensional construction that entails the disintegration of self-identity under the weight of stigmatization. By synthesizing the theory of "social death" with Erving Goffman’s framework of "stigmatization", the article argues that social death is not a unidirectional form of social oppression, but a sophisticated process co-constituted by external institutional mechanisms and internal psychological identification. The study first notes that the film's metaphorical substitution of "fever disease" for AIDS reflects the stigmatized reality faced by persons with AIDS in China. External society systematically strips patients of their social identities and rights to normal life through spatial segregation (e.g., confining them to abandoned schools outside the village) and public scrutiny (e.g., labeling them as "promiscuous" or "immoral"). Concurrently, through sustained discrimination and exclusion, patients internalize this external stigma, resulting in self-deprecation and behavioral withdrawal, manifest as passive acceptance and relinquishment of resistance. Through close analysis of the film's narrative and audiovisual language, the article further illustrates how characters progressively move toward social death under the dual pressure of public judgment and self-scrutiny. For instance, Shang Qinqin, infected through blood selling, never attempts to explain her situation; Zhao Deyi offers no retort when his cigarettes are refused or his wedding candy is rejected. These behaviors exemplify the thorough internalization of external stigma into self-identity. Crucially, the terminally ill characters' obsessive pursuit of symbolic objects—such as the marriage certificate, the "Little Red Book", a red cotton-padded jacket, and a dignified coffin—is interpreted as their final struggle against existential anxiety. These objects, serving as tangible symbols of social identity and relational bonds, become their ultimate proof of having once existed as recognized social beings. However, this very act of striving for validation essentially constitutes a passive acceptance of mainstream social norms—a tragic compromise made by individuals powerless to alter their stigmatized fate. The study ultimately concludes that the most profound form of death is not the end of biological life, but rather the tragic paradox wherein individuals, in their struggle to reclaim dignity, unknowingly direct all their agency toward endorsing their own social death. This research not only provides a novel theoretical perspective for interpreting “The Most Beloved” but also offers critical reflections on the tension between mechanisms of social exclusion and the dignity of life, carrying significant practical relevance and critical value.