2024 Vol. 37 No. 2
The political dimension of Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization is based on Marx’s thought on the relationship between man and nature, and emphasizes that the construction of ecological civilization must adhere to the leadership of the CPC and the socialist system, which constitutes its logical starting point. It further calls for the transformation of the traditional development view of pursuing economic growth at the expense of the environment to be replaced by the ecological development view that “lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets”. It also requires that we should correctly handle the dialectical relationship between economic development and ecological environment, and surpass the ecological development view of the western ecological thought which stresses rule by virtue or technical governance. And thus, it puts forward the socialist ecological governance view of “morality and legality”, and demands the establishment of scientific outlook on development, right view on performance evaluation and strict evaluation system for environmental protection and accountability system. The characteristics of political dimension of Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization lie in adhering to the organic unity of ecological civilization thought in the dimensions of philosophy and culture, economy, society and politics, which overcomes the defects of western ecological thought in the theoretical basis and value orientation, thus realizing the revolutionary change in the history of human ecological civilization thought. This is also of great value for us to correctly grasp the essence of ecological civilization and promote the development path and construction of ecological civilization in China.
The view of ecological economy is an important viewpoint in Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization and Xi Jinping Thought on Economy, and reflects the intrinsic relationship between them. Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Economy contains rich and profound ideas of new quality productive forces. Understanding the essence, the great value and the practice path of the ideas of new quality productive forces embodied in Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Economy is of great practical significance and far-reaching historical significance for promoting the development of ecological civilization and pushing forward the development of Chinese modernization with the modernization of harmony between humanity and nature.
Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization, as the Marxist ecological theory in contemporary China, is a set of ecological discourse system of Chinese modernization with scientific rigor, profound connotation and clear logic. To understand and grasp the discourse logic system of Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization, it is necessary to correctly recognize its basic Marxism stance and its essential requirements of socialism from value orientation, scientifically grasp the dialectical relationship between its long-range objectives and phased task and objectives from its strategic vision, and adopt dialectical materialism method from its practice path to initiate a multi-layered and all-dimensional dynamic mechanism. Therefore, we need to recognize from the discourse logic system of Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization that the construction of socialist ecological civilization with Chinese characteristics has comprehensively transcended the capitalist mode of operation, scientifically depicted the new form of human civilization, and innovatively explored the transformation scheme connecting the past, the present and the future, so as to enhance the interpretation potential of green politics of Chinese modernization discourse, and strengthen the consciousness of socialist ideology of the subject of green transformation.
Xi Jinping’s important remarks on food security in the new era has upheld fundamental principles of the classical Marxist theory and broken new ground, carried forward the development of the Party’s and national strategy on food security, and responded powerfully to how to guarantee national food security in the new era. That means they have the distinct characteristics of scientificity, national character and change of the times. They have interpreted the scientific connotation of food security featuring self-sufficiency based on domestic grain production, guaranteed production capacity, moderate imports, and technological support, and clarified the specific requirements for safeguarding food security in terms of policy, industry, market, production and technology, which demonstrate China’s unique charm as a responsible big country by actively participating in the governance of world food security. Therefore, to implement Xi Jinping’s important remarks on food security in the new era, we must attach great importance to food production, strictly retain the red line of arable land, and assign equal responsibilities to Party committees and governments. In addition, we also need to constantly motivate farmers to grow grain, firmly maintain the initiative in food security, and comprehensively consolidate the foundation of social stability.
From the theoretical dimension, the whole-process people’s democracy is an innovative form of the people’s democracy theory, a major theoretical innovation of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on socialist political construction in the new era, and a contemporary exemplification of Marxist theory of people’s democracy. From the historical dimension, it is a brand-new issue proposed by the CPC in summarizing experience of democratic practice over the past century. From the realistic dimension, it reflects not only an urgent need to build a great modern socialist country in all respects, and achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, but also a realistic need to innovate international communication discourse of China’s model of democracy. From the cultural dimension, it is rooted in fine traditional Chinese culture, and has creatively developed such important ideas as putting people first, aspiring for the common good, mutual understanding and inclusiveness. From the institutional dimension, it is supported by a solid macroscopic institutional system, as well as an ever-improving specific operating mechanism, and people’s recognition of these systems is constantly growing. An in-depth study of the generative logic of these five dimensions of the whole-process people’s democracy is of great theoretical significance and practical value for advancing the cause of people’s democracy in the new era, and maintaining firm confidence in staying on the path of socialist political advancement with Chinese characteristics.
Xi Jinping’s important remarks on regulating and guiding the healthy development of capital are the product of combining the basic tenets of Marxism with the reality of capital development under the conditions of socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics, and the latest theoretical achievements in the study of the capital theory of contemporary Marxist political economics. In terms of generative logic, these remarks are the product of our times of the Chinese interpretation of Marxist critical theory of capital. They have summarized the experience of the Communist Party of China in harnessing and transcending capital over the past century, and responded to the internal requirements of prosperity and development of socialist market economy. In terms of core essence, these remarks have profoundly answered the questions of realistic basis, fundamental guarantee, value criterion, recognition premise, key measures, crucial means, focus point and ultimate destination of regulating and guiding the healthy development of capital in the new era. In terms of value implication, they have not only promoted the concrete application of Marxist critical theory of capital and development of our times, but also led the study of capital theory of Marxist political economics in the new era to depth, which provide scientific theoretical guidance for effectively regulating and guiding the healthy development of Chinese capital.
With its powerful and intelligent content generation mechanism, the advanced artificial intelligence represented by generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) has led to a continuous increase in the proportion of technology in the production of content products, and a relative decrease in the proportion of direct human input, which pose a challenge to basic theories of traditional copyright laws such as the originality requirement of works and the humanistic principle of rights of works. The theory of creative essence and the concept of closed works based on the intellectual input of natural individuals seem to be inadequate, when faced with the issue of workability of artificial intelligence generated content (AIGC) . From the perspective of process (subjective criterion), the process of generating artificial intelligence content conforms to the thinking characteristics of human creation; from the perspective of results (objective criterion), AIGC has the appearance form and information consumption function of copyrighted works, which are in line with the essential attributes of copyrighted works. If we artificially separate the homogeneous relationship between AIGC and copyrighted works in the production process and substantive function, and forcibly distinguish the legal nature of artificial intelligence generated products and works created by natural individuals, we will go against the institutional purpose of copyright law to adjust the interests of information consumer goods in response to technological development, which will ultimately lead to chaos in the legal order of copyright.
In the era of digital economy, Internet platforms usually do not charge users money for their services, but instead request users to grant consent to the extensive commercial use of a large amount of personal information. The essence of this “free” service is to “pay with personal information”, and a bilateral onerous contractual relationship is established between the users and the platform, in which the users are obliged to “grant consent + provide personal information”. Under the model of “paying with personal information”, the users’ consent is no longer a revocable unilateral consent, but a contractual license. The recognition of the practice of information subjects’ consent as a contractual license is not only conducive to the comprehensive protection of the rights and interests of information subjects as consumers, but also contributes to the vigorous development of the digital economy.
Digitalization of justice has advanced precise sentencing recommendations among China’s procuratorates. However, judicial activities might be affected by the revealed preferences of judicial officers, making them not directly fit technical algorithms. The structured analysis of 293 cases of judgment exposed difficulties about the digitalization of sentencing recommendations for mediated bribery. Specifically, this special form of crime corresponds to multiple legal provisions, lacks prevailing sentencing rules when the amount is particularly large, and is closely related to social interpersonal relationships. Based on the revealed preference theory, judicial behavior can be integrated into the analysis and evaluation of sentencing activities, which helps to improve the digital analysis of sentencing recommendations and then build an algorithm model of declared sentence and fine punishment for such crimes. The model preliminarily reveals that when judicial officers apply the same sentencing consequences for different amounts involved, they may partially deviate from or even change their theoretical effect due to revealed group preferences.
Dormant equity investment consists of three main parties, namely, the actual investor, the nominal shareholder and the target company, and two serial contract relationships. Since the actual investor does not hold the equity before signing the contract and has no legal relationship with the target company, the signing of the dormant equity investment contract between the actual investor and the nominal shareholder can only produce creditor’s rights, and the company law only recognizes the status and equity of the nominal shareholder. When judging the validity of the dormant equity investment contract that evades mandatory provisions of law, we should stick to the basic position of “general condition invalid, exception valid”. The invalidity or rescission of the dormant equity investment contract only leads to the termination of the rights and obligations between the actual investor and the nominal shareholder, but does not affect the legal relationship between the nominal shareholder and the target company. The nominal shareholder continues to enjoy the equity, but its exclusive equity rights constitute unjust enrichment, so the unjust enrichment should be returned, and the equity appreciation should be fairly distributed.
At present, the Chinese government has clearly defined marketization, rule of law and internationalization as the requirements for the construction of business environment. In the digital era, the World Bank has recently pioneered the “digital technologies index” as a cross-cutting evaluation indicator of the “Business Enabling Environment”, and integrated digital legislation into all the first-level evaluation indicators. These development trends show that the level of digitization and rule of law of the business environment in economies have become a key part of the international evaluation system for business environment. Although China has made fruitful achievements in the rule-of-law building of digital business environment, there are still deficiencies in benchmarking against the indicators of the international evaluation system for business environment represented by digital indicators of business enabling environment and digital business indicators. And there is a need to improve the rule of law of data governance, of platform governance as well as of digital market supervision, and the digitization capability of legislation. China should speed up the legalization process of data governance by improving the rules of data governance, and enhance the legalization level of platform governance by focusing on the integrated construction of digital platforms. In addition, China needs to promote the digital transformation of supervision by stimulating the vitality of digital market competition and accelerate the process of legislative digitization by establishing a digital rule-of-law system, so as to provide strong support for the construction of Chinese modernization.
As a typical commercial relationship, the entrusted financing covers multiple financial fields. Under the principle of “separate operation and management”, in judicial practice, there exists a line of thought that the legal nature and application of the entrusted financing is determined merely by name or by following the dominant factors. However, this is likely to cause an absence and displacement of the applicable law. Also, as the entrusted financing is different from the general civil entrustment, it is inappropriate for the court to directly apply by analogy the provisions on “commission contract” in the Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China; otherwise, it is easy to cause the dilemma of “cutting the feet to fit the shoes” in applicable law. The entrusted financing can be divided into trust financing and general entrusted financing, both of which are based on the entrustors’ trust of fiduciaries, and the trustees enjoy the right of control that may have an impact on the interests of the entrustors or the beneficiary. Therefore, entrusted financing should be regarded as a kind of fiduciary relationship, and it is inappropriate to define it as a general civil entrustment or a generalized fiduciary relationship. Taking the fiduciary relationship as the basis, the trustees assume fiduciary duty, which can strengthen the protection of investment rights and interests. With the interpretative theory, the principle of good faith can be used to supplement the interpretation and the approach of “substance over form” can be adopted to realize the application of corresponding fiduciary rules in the Trust Law of the People’s Republic of China in individual cases, so as to improve the judicial adjudication of entrusted financing.
Claim is a legal way for the children born out of wedlock to be legitimate children, and it, together with other regulations, such as presumption of maternity or paternity, denial of maternity or paternity, legislation and so on, constitutes a complete legal system of maternity or paternity. However, the Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China only provides general provisions on claim system, and does not specify the actual operation norms of the facultative claim, mandatory claim, denial of maternity or paternity, and legitimation. The legal system of claim in Germany and Switzerland can provide a good reference for the improvement of the applicable rules of claim in the Civil Code of China. The interpretation and application of the claim system should be based on the necessity of blood relationship, maintain the identity stability of children born out of wedlock, and keep in line with the best interests of children to ensure the kinship rights and interests of children born out of wedlock. Therefore, this paper aims to provide theoretical support and combine practical experience to accurately understand and apply the claim system.
As an important “cultural apparatus” in modern society, public museums bear the important mission of facilitating cultural communication among the public. The new media communication model of museums implies the integration of museums, as a mass culture communication medium with the new age media on the basis of retaining their media characteristics, i.e. the “remediation” of museums. The study selects official accounts of the Military Museum of the Chinese People’s Revolution, the Palace Museum, and the National Museum of China on the Douyin platform, and based on a text analysis of their video content, discusses their specific communication practices on the short video platform and how to achieve “remediation” based on their original content and communication characteristics. The study shows that the Military Museum takes revolutionary history and military knowledge as the basic text, which is highly specialised, and adopts living and dynamic visual expression, reflecting the characteristic of “immediacy”; the Palace Museum holds exhibitions featuring the aesthetic values and lifestyle of the ancient elite and adopts a popular and entertaining narrative logic to make short videos, promoting the mutual construction of online communication and offline experience and demonstrating the characteristics of “hypermediacy”; the National Museum of China is characterised by its valuable collections of “national treasures”, and the short-video platform featuring content fragmentation has not yet fully demonstrated the traditional contextualized linear narrative logic, so there is room for creating new ways of expression.
Government short videos have become an important tool for government affairs disclosure, government-citizen interaction, public opinion guidance and social governance. This paper takes 792 government short videos released by “Healthy China”, an official TikTok account of the National Health Commission of China, from December 27, 2019 to January 8, 2023 as the research object, and the heuristic-systematic model of information processing as the theoretical basis, to comparatively examine how the content type and video length as systematic clues, and the dialogue loop, crisis communication strategies and title length as heuristic clues affect citizen engagement behavior in crisis and post-crisis situations. The results show that compared with service appreciation information, the latest news about the COVID-19 crisis, the governments’ responses and stakeholders’ guidance can all have positive impacts on passive engagement in crisis situations. However, all of them have no effects on passive and active engagement in post-crisis situations. In terms of crisis communication strategies, compared with information strategy, support strategy can promote passive engagement, while adaptation strategy has no significant effect on both active and passive engagement in crisis situations; in post-crisis situations, support strategy positively affects passive engagement, while adaptation strategy positively influences active engagement. The effects of dialogue loop on both active and passive engagement are not significant in crisis and post-crisis situations. In crisis situations, the title length positively affects both passive and active engagement, while in post-crisis situations, the title length has a positive effect on active engagement but a negative effect on passive engagement. In crisis situations, video length reduces passive engagement, but promotes active engagement, while in post-crisis situations, it promotes passive engagement.
Based on the theory of social presence, this article explores the cross-platform information communication effects and influencing factors of government new media using 2 031 pieces of data from the Sina Weibo, WeChat, and TikTok accounts of the S Provincial Traffic Police. Regression analysis is employed for examination. The results reveal that, from the perspective of social presence theory, government new media create public participation scenarios through content production, engaging the public’s attention to government information and helping them to accept and share it. Throughout this process, affective, interactive, and cohesive strategies supporting the construction of social presence generate differentiated communication effects on different platforms. Additionally, diverse content themes on different platforms also exert varying impacts on the information communication effects of government new media. Based on the above conclusions, government new media should be operated according to the characteristics of different platforms and actively create a sense of social presence to improve their communication effects. In terms of overall content positioning, relationship-oriented and other-centered information release strategies should be adopted. In terms of theme setting and strategy selection, operations should be differentiated based on the various dimensions of social presence, the technical logic of different platforms, and the active demands of users.
Based on the survey data, this study aims to explore how short videos, the most popular visual social media among young people, impact their online political participation. Aganinst the background of the government’s efforts to “improve and make innovative ways to carry out public awareness initiatives on positive content, strenthen governance of internet content, and shape a clear cyberspace”, this study also examines the impacts of government short videos, and the role and effects of the perception of short video governance as a mediating factor in this process. The results show that general short videos significantly weaken online political participation among the youth, and their perceptions of short video governance have no mediating effects on that, while government short videos significantly promote their online political participation. Among government short video users, young people have a better feeling for improvement governance (perception of information disclosure), which can further strengthen their online political participation. Even if they perceive and experience strong restrictive governance (perception of internet orderliness), it would not reduce their online political participation. Obviously, young users of government short videos generally accept this tense and orderly short video governance. Finally, according to the frequency of using government new media, active participants can be identified among young users and correct guidance can then be provided.
The agglomeration of the civil aviation industry is an important factor in achieving optimal regional resource allocation and regional economic development with high-end supply and demand markets, deep industrial collaboration, and great transportation convenience. Provincial data from 2009 to 2020 are used to explore the effects of three agglomeration patterns in the civil aviation industry — specialized agglomeration, diversified agglomeration, and competition effect — on regional high-quality economic development, and further test the effects of agglomeration at different stages. The results show that as the level of agglomeration rises, both specialized agglomeration and diversified agglomeration of the civil aviation industry have an inhibitory effect on regional high-quality economic development before becoming a driver of that, and competition effect is positively related to regional high-quality economic development.
Chinese airlines commonly adopt diversification strategies to cope with market fluctuations; however, excessive diversification can also increase the financial risks of firms. Managers, shareholders, creditors, and the government, as governance entities, play decisive roles in corporate diversification strategies. An investigation into how these governance entities influence corporate diversifed expansion is important to understand the causes of overdiversification of Chinese airlines and to find effective countermeasures. Based on the data of seven airlines from 2015 to 2020, it finds that managers’ overconfidence in business conditions and profitability will promote airline expansion in non-airline businesses, which is an important cause of airline overdiversification; while government intervention can effectively inhibit the effect of managers’ overconfidence in diversifed expansion. Therefore, to address the problem of overdiversification caused by managers’ overconfidence, it is necessary to strengthen the government’s regulation on and intervention in airline business.
This study analyzes the distribution level of China’s airport cargo scale system (Zipf index) based on the Rank-Size Rule. The results show that: at present, China’s airport cargo scale system presents a “4+3+