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The purpose of this study is to investigate how a country's competitive tax policy influences its inward foreign direct investments (FDI) in the Asia–Pacific region, even when given particular constraints (e.g., population, public governance, skilled labor, and so on) exist.

The paper uses the system GMM estimation approach to test the hypothesis. Data on FDI, corporate income tax, and various confounding factors were drawn from Ernst and Young's worldwide corporate tax guide, the World Bank, and other sources to create a panel of 28 economies over the period 2000–2016.

The present research confirms the negative association between corporate income tax (CIT) and FDI inflows. The effects of other confounding factors on FDI net inflows are also supported (e.g., connectivity, GDP per capita, population, skilled labor, and trade openness). Our results support the argument that foreign investments may be more sensitive to CIT. Therefore, CIT is an effective indicator to observe international tax competition.

The present research uses rich data on statutory CIT and other economic and public governance factors to investigate the relationship between tax competition and FDI inflows in the Asia–Pacific region. The findings add important supplements to the nuanced understanding of the political-economic dynamics in this region, especially when cut-throat tax competition, trade tensions, and stagnant economic growth have been key challenges for global economies.

This study aims to investigate the impact of managerial power distance on the corporate sustainability performance of Chinese firms and to explore the regulatory role of corporate digitalization in the Chinese capital market.

The study collects data from 2,632 A-share Chinese non-financial firms listed on Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges during the period from 2010 to 2020. The authors apply different panel data regression techniques (fixed effects, GMM-System) to investigate the impact of managerial power distance on corporate sustainability performance and to explore the regulatory role of corporate digitalization in the Chinese capital market.

The results of the study show a positive relationship between high managerial power distance and the sustainability performance of Chinese non-financial firms. This positive relationship is particularly pronounced in Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The results also show that corporate digitalization increases the sustainability performance of Chinese firms. Further, corporate digitalization weakens the positive relationship between high-power distance and the sustainability performance of Chinese firms. These results are robust to alternate sustainability performance measures and various regression techniques.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that investigates the regulating impact of corporate digitalization on the relationship between managerial power distance and corporate sustainability performance in China.

In this fast-changing world, digitization has become crucial to organizations, allowing decision-makers to alter corporate processes. Companies with a higher corporate social responsibility (CSR) level not only help encourage employees to focus on their goals, but they also show that they take their social responsibility seriously, which is increasingly important in today’s digital economy. So, this study aims to examine the relationship between digital transformation and CSR disclosure of Chinese A-share companies. Furthermore, this research investigates the moderating impact of governance heterogeneity, including CEO power and corporate internal control (INT) mechanisms.

This study used fixed effect estimation with robust standard errors to examine the relationship between digital transformation and CSR disclosure and the moderating effect of governance heterogeneity among Chinese A-share companies from 2010 to 2020. The whole sample consists of 17,266 firms, including 5,038 state-owned enterprise (SOE) company records and 12,228 non-SOE records. The whole sample data is collected from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research, the Chinese Research Data Services and the WIND databases.

The regression results lead us to three conclusions after classifying the sample into non-SOE and SOE groups. First, Chinese A-share businesses with greater levels of digitalization have lower CSR disclosures. Both SOE and non-SOE are consistent with these findings. Second, increasing CEO authority creates a more centralized company decision-making structure (Breuer et al., 2022; Freire, 2019), which improves the negative association between digitalization and CSR disclosure. These conclusions, however, also apply to non-SOE. Finally, INT reinforces the association between corporate digitization and CSR disclosure, which is especially obvious in SOEs. These findings are robust to alternative HEXUN CSR disclosure index. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the negative relationship between corporate digitalization and CSR disclosures is more pronounced in bigger, highly levered and highly financialized firms.

Digitalization and CSR disclosure are well studied, but few have examined their interactions from a governance heterogeneity perspective in China. Practitioners and policymakers may use these insights to help business owners implement suitable digital policies for firm development from diverse business perspectives.

This study aims to determine the impact of corporate digital transformation on the audit opinions of auditors in A-share nonfinancial listed companies in China. It also examines how corporate internal control and corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure levels moderate this effect. This study fills a gap in the literature by investigating the impact of digital transformation on business performance, especially in the Chinese context, where digital transformation is rapidly progressing. This study also offers practical guidance for practitioners on whether and how to undergo a digital transformation and enhance their internal governance and social responsibility practices.

This study uses a sample of 2,637 Chinese A-share nonfinancial listed companies from 2009–2022, after excluding firms with ST, ST* or PT status; negative revenue; and missing data for three or more consecutive years. Digital transformation index data is collected from firms’ annual reports, and the other microlevel data from the Wind and CSMAR databases. The authors winsorize the data at 1% for outliers, resulting in 17,305 firm-year observations. This study uses fixed-effects logistic regression with clustered robust standard errors to analyze the binary dependent variable. This study also performs various robustness checks, such as probit model, multilevel fixed effects model and IV 2SLS estimations, to confirm the validity of the results.

This study reveals that digital transformation leads to standard unqualified audit opinions, meaning that companies that invest more in digital technologies and capabilities has more tendency to receive standard unqualified audit opinions, which signify the reliability and credibility of their financial reporting. This study also finds that corporate internal control and CSR disclosure levels positively moderate the effect of digital transformation on audit opinions. This study further conducts heterogeneity analysis and shows that the positive effect is originated by the state-owned enterprises, firms audited by non-Big4 auditing firms, firms with high internal control levels and firms with low CSR disclosure levels. The results are robust to different econometric methods.

This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on how digital transformation influences audit quality and credibility and how internal governance and social responsibility practices strengthen this influence. This study also has practical implications for practitioners by providing advice on whether and how to pursue a digital transformation and improve their internal governance and social responsibility practices. This study demonstrates its originality by reviewing the existing literature from three theoretical perspectives: stakeholder, signaling and reputation, and identifying the research gap that the study addresses. This study also compares its findings with previous studies and discusses the implications and limitations of its research. This study also proposes directions for future research based on its findings.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an investigation on a new kind of photocatalytic material, namely, the porous ceramic foam loading titanium dioxide, which can make an effective photocatalytic degradation of the methyl orange (MO) solution in the wastewater.

The natural zeolite powder has been used as the primary raw material to produce a sort of lightweight porous ceramic foam by impregnating polymer foam in slurry and then sintering. With the sol-gel method, a kind of open-cell reticular porous ceramic foam loading TiO₂ film was obtained having a good photocatalytic action, and the resultant porous composite product presents the bulk density of 0.3~0.6 g/cm³ to be able to float on water.

The MO could tend to be completely degraded in the solution with a certain concentration by the TiO₂-loaded ceramic foam irradiated with ultraviolet light, and this composite foam was found to have high degradation efficiency for the MO solution in a wide range of pH.

This work presents a TiO₂-loaded ceramic foam that can effectively photo-catalyze to degrade the MO in water, and the degradation efficiency were examined under different conditions of the MO solution with various pH values.

This study aims to examine the evolution of spatial–temporal patterns in China’s hotel industry from 1978 to 2018.

A database comprising over 140,000 hotels with more than 30 rooms was created. The exploratory spatial–temporal data analysis (ESTDA) method, based on space–time cube model, was used to explore and visualize the spatial–temporal pattern of hotels.

The Chinese hotel industry can be divided into two development stages, namely, a large hotel-dominant stage before 2000 and a small–medium-sized hotel-dominant stage after 2000. China’s prefecture-level cities were clustered into four tiers. The higher the tier, the earlier the city will initiate hotel development. The Chinese hotel industry has four continuous hotspots (the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, Bohai Rim and Sichuan and Chongqing) and some temporary hotspots.

This study lacks quantitative investigation, which could show the underlying mechanism of the evolution of the Chinese hotel industry.

This study is the first to investigate China’s hotel evolution over 40 years by applying big data and the ESTDA method. The systematic and evolutionary exploration will enable hotel researchers to understand the spatial–temporal nature of hotel distribution better. Introducing the ESTDA method into tourism and hotel research also provides an additional tool to researchers. Hotel investors and operators, city and tourism planners and market regulators can learn from the evolution of location patterns to make better where and when decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an investigation on a new kind of adsorbent materials, namely, the Prussian blue analog (PBA)-loaded albite-base porous ceramic foam, which can effectively adsorb the heavy metal ion in the wastewater.

The natural zeolite powder has been used as the primary raw material to make a sort of porous ceramic foam by impregnating polymer foam in slurry and then sintering. Adjusting the technological parameters could control the bulk density of the ceramic product, which could float on water with the bulk density less than 1 g/cm³ and also sink in water with the bulk density higher than 1 g/cm³. After desilicating the porous ceramic foam, an Al-Fe type PBA with a strong function of ion exchange was loaded on the ceramic surface by directly yielding.

The adsorption performance for harmful metal ions was greatly improved by combining together the high adsorption capability of the PB analog and the efficient high specific surface area of the porous ceramic foam.

This work presents a PBA-loaded albite-base porous ceramic foam that can effectively adsorb the harmful substance in water, and the adsorption efficiency for some typical harmful ions, i.e., Cd²⁺, Cs⁺ and As(V), was examined under different conditions of the experimental period, the pH value and the ion concentration in the tested solution.

The debate surrounding the influence of parental nutritional knowledge on offspring’s susceptibility to overweight/obesity persists, with a dearth of research elucidating the mechanisms involved. This study aims to explore if and how parental nutrition knowledge affects adolescents' overweight and obesity, by highlighting the mediating effect of parental perceived severity of obesity.

A questionnaire was conducted in Zhejiang Province, China, with a sample of 2,298 students as well as their parents during November–December 2022. Logistic regression and propensity score matching methods was used to validate the relationship between parental nutrition knowledge and adolescents' overweight/obesity, while the multiplication coefficient method was used to test the mediation effect.

Parental nutrition knowledge significantly reduces the odds ratio for adolescent obesity, without affecting the likelihood of overweight. The perceived severity of obesity fully mediates the relationship between parental nutrition knowledge and adolescents' overweight and obesity.

By exploring mediating factors, the analysis offers an innovative explanation of the process by which nutritional knowledge influences health behaviors. Lack of relevant motivation or beliefs is an important reason for the failure of nutritional knowledge. If parents do not have sufficient awareness of the dangers of overweight or obesity, they will have inadequate motivation to apply nutritional knowledge in guiding dietary or exercise decisions. We also supplement the literature by demonstrating the health belief model in highlighting the mediating mechanism of perceived severity in the relationship between parental nutrition knowledge and adolescents' obesity.

Extending the research focus on subjective beliefs and cognitive motivation bears important policy implications for designing education campaigns to effectively restrain the obesity rate. Considering that many Chinese parents have insufficient awareness of the dangers of childhood overweight and obesity, even considering “chubby children” as symbols of “cuteness” and “health”. This can largely undermine their motivation to apply nutritional knowledge to restrain adolescents' overweight and obesity. Consequently, education campaigns, public health professionals and government agencies can be developed aiming to increase parental nutrition knowledge, especially on the hazards of obesity.

With the prevalence of overweight and obesity among adolescents, it is critical to control students' weight and health. Families, especially parents, are vital to the physical and mental health of adolescents. This research confirmed that improving parental nutrition knowledge is necessary for maintaining a healthy weight for adolescents. Results also emphasized that the association between parental nutritional knowledge and adolescents' overweight or obesity was mediated by parental perceived severity. This indicates that interventions designed to enhance parental nutritional knowledge should pay more attention to strengthening parental cognition of and beliefs in obesity.

This paper added to the debate on the impact of parental nutritional knowledge on adolescent’s overweight and obesity. Based on the health belief model, it also identified a novel pathway and mechanism by highlighting the importance of subjective motivations and beliefs such as the perceived severity of obesity in influencing overweight/obesity. Conclusions bear important policy implications for designing education campaigns to effectively restrain the obesity rate.

Digitalization is increasingly important for promoting authentic CSR practices. Firms with higher CSR levels motivate their employees to pursue their goals and demonstrate their social responsibility. However, the literature has not adequately examined how firm-level digitalization influences corporate sustainability from a governance perspective. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring how digitalization affects CSR disclosure, a key aspect of sustainability, at the firm level. Furthermore, this study also aims to investigate how governance factors, such as management power, internal control and minority shareholder pressure, moderate this effect.

This study employs a fixed effect model with robust standard errors to analyze how digitalization and CSR disclosure are related and how this relationship is moderated by governance heterogeneity among Chinese A-share companies from 2010 to 2020. The sample consists of 2,339 firms, of which 360 are SOEs and 1,979 are non-SOEs. To ensure robustness, this study has excluded the observations in 2020 to avoid the effects of COVID-19 and used an alternative measure of CSR disclosure based on the HEXUN CSR disclosure index. Furthermore, this study also explores the link in various corporate-level CSR settings.

The regression findings reveal that: First, Chinese A-share firms with higher digitalization levels disclose less CSR information. This finding holds for both SOEs and non-SOEs. Second, stronger management power has a negative moderating effect that weakens the link between digitalization and CSR disclosure, and this effect is mainly driven by SOEs. Third, internal control attenuates the negative association between firm digitalization and CSR disclosure, which is more pronounced in SOEs. Finally, minority shareholders exacerbate the negative relationship between digitalization and CSR disclosure, and this effect is more evident in non-SOEs. These results are robust to excluding the potential COVID effect and using an alternative HEXUN CSR disclosure index measure.

Digitalization and sustainability have been widely discussed at a macro level, but their relationship at a micro level has been largely overlooked. Moreover, there is hardly any evidence on how governance heterogeneity affects this relationship in emerging economies, especially China. This paper addresses these issues by providing empirical evidence on how digital transformation influences CSR disclosure in China, a context where digitalization and CSR are both rapidly evolving. The paper also offers implications for both practitioners and policymakers to design appropriate digital strategies for firm development from diverse business perspectives.

Regulating and guiding the sound development of capital under a socialist system is not only a significant theoretical innovation rooted in Chinese practice by the Communist Party of China (CPC) but also a major practical exploration for the smooth progression of the party and the nation’s modernization endeavors.

Adopting an analytical framework that unifies theoretical, historical and practical logic, this paper explores the rationality of capital’s existence under a socialist system based on the notion that capital is a materialized production relationship. It also examines the staged evolution of capital theory under socialism, highlighting the great leap forward realized by the capital theory of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

With the CPC Central Committee’s deepening understanding of the capital patterns in the socialist system, capital-related policies have undergone a developmental journey through several stages – from the negation and elimination of capital to the support and operation of capital and finally to the stage of regulating and guiding capital. This reflects the reciprocal and complementary relationship between capital theory and capital policy.

In response to issues such as the disorderly expansion of capital in the new development stage, it is imperative to actively promote a practical pathway safeguarded by the adherence to Party leadership, guided by the capital theory of socialism with Chinese characteristics and targeted toward common prosperity.