The digital economy has become a core area of strategic competition between the United States and China. In recent years, the United States has continuously intensified its strategic deployment in digital competition with China, escalating related competitive tactics and leveraging its influence to exert pressure on third countries and regions, attempting to comprehensively contain Chinese companies globally and thereby weaken their competitiveness in the international market. However, even under such immense external pressure, Chinese companies have consistently gained widespread recognition in overseas markets due to their inherent strengths and unique characteristics. This resilience of Chinese companies is largely due to their ability to engage in disruptive innovation. This article systematically reviews the theory of disruptive innovation. Two representative companies, Huawei and Alibaba, are selected as case studies for in-depth research. This article traces the growth journeys of these two companies from marginalized small enterprises to global technology leaders, analyzing the strategies and driving factors that shaped their disruptive innovation capabilities during this development process. This paper further discusses how Huawei and Alibaba leveraged the unique advantages of disruptive innovation to effectively resist Western isolation and containment in Southeast Asia, earning the trust and support of local markets and securing market positions in smart cities and 5G communications, respectively, that are difficult for Western companies to replace. This paper hopes to provide valuable theoretical guidance and practical insights, helping Chinese companies achieve steady growth amidst increasingly severe suppression and containment, and a complex and volatile international competitive environment.

Under the great changes in the past century, emerging transnational technologies have been brought into the radius of American game against China. Scientific analysis of the narrative content of American science and technology in China can provide a mirror for American science and technology issues and American public opinion research on China. Based on the strategic narrative theory, this paper clarifies the strategic narrative of American science and technology to China in the topic of "Ban TikTok". It is found that the operational path of American strategic narrative of science and technology to China is divided into framing strategic scope, emphasizing strategic connection, intensifying strategic contradiction and solidifying strategic narrative, which embodies the narrative thinking that the United States links stereotypes and stigmatizes China's science and technology, forms a whole-subject narrative layout of "government-media-think tank", establishes narrative skills based on wedge strategy, and finally achieves the goal of suppressing rising countries by science and technology. The narrative of American science and technology strategy to China protects American international discourse right, but it is limited by the intermittent characteristics of American science and technology policy, the large-scale development of China's science and technology going to sea and the common conclusion of emerging global science and technology norms. The U.S. strategy of suppressing Chinese science and technology has been transferred to other China science and technology products. Therefore, the narrative suppression analysis of American science and technology to China should be transformed into relevant strategic industries, so as to help China science and technology to respond to the situation and follow the trend.

AI Agent technology is different from traditional large language models in that it can make autonomous decisions, perform multi-step tasks, and sense the environment; thus, it is now changing the world of technology. The AI Agent will use the large language model in the scaffolding software to plan and carry out a series of tasks independently without continuous human intervention, and it can do more than just answer questions. The purpose of this architecture is dual-use, and it can be employed for civil and military applications; thus, the same framework of autonomous planning and tool invocation that has optimised commercial workflows can also be used in the military for command and control, intelligence analysis, autonomous weapons systems, etc. Therefore, the dual-use boundary is determined not by the category of goods but by how they are used and connected in the system; thus, the old way of classifying or declaring the end-use of goods is no longer effective. With the intensification of strategic competition between China and the United States and the changes in the economic security strategy of the European Union, many countries have begun to add artificial intelligence to the mandatory foreign investment security review. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has expanded the scope of application for inbound investment under the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act, introduced the Outbound Investment Security Program to curb outbound investment in countries of concern, and by 2025, the National Security Presidential Memorandum will increase control over sensitive technologies such as artificial intelligence. The new Foreign Direct Investment Screening Regulation in the EU lists artificial intelligence, quantum technology and semiconductors as important areas to be monitored for all member states, and the EU has started to study the screening of outbound investments. China's Measures for the Security Review of Foreign Investment have covered significant amounts of information and key technologies in the field of information technology and core industries, but specific judgment criteria for the new form of technology, AI agents, have not been established. Building on the foundation of technological security paradox, this paper thinks that the commercial value of AI Agent technology is directly related to its autonomy, adaptability and generalisation ability; at the same time, these are also the reasons for concern. Based on the criteria and practice in the United States, the European Union and China, as well as through cases such as Shield AI, OpenAI and the merger of SpaceX and xAI, this paper introduces the three structural defects of the current review system. The first is the accuracy of technical identification; static classification cannot consider that the capability changes according to the application environment. The second is the coordination of norms, as the security of a country is increasingly used to achieve technological containment in the background of geopolitical competition. The third is dynamic adaptability; that is to say, with the exponential growth in agents' capabilities, the revision of review norms has been slow. A new hierarchical review model based on functions, rather than product labels, will be put forward in this paper. The five parts of the AI Agent model are Autonomy, Connectivity, Adaptability, Collaboration and Accumulation, and one of them has been assigned to each of the four risk levels. If any aspect reaches the third level, a deep audit will be conducted; if two or more aspects reach the third level or any single aspect reaches the fourth level, then strict measures will be taken. Some proposals for the construction and operation of the Chinese review system were also made in this paper, such as adding a particular review guide for AI agent technology, establishing a joint expert assessment team to conduct practical capability tests, and introducing a regular update mechanism for threshold parameters. By changing the focus of the review from what a technology is to what it can do, the model aims to provide a theoretical basis and an institutional reference for China to improve the judgment criteria for the civilian and military dual-use attributes of AI Agent technology in foreign investment security review.

Artificial intelligence is a key driver of cultivating new quality productive forces in China. Exploring how the synergy between digitalization and green transformation can propel future industrial development is crucial for overcoming bottlenecks. This study addresses three main questions. First, it examines whether digital transformation, green transformation, and their synergy can drive China’s future industrial development and thereby inform industrial layout. Second, it analyzes how this synergy influences future industrial development by evaluating three mediating channels: green financial investment, green innovation capacity, and industrial structure. Third, it investigates whether the combined digital-green transformation generates spatial spillover effects, providing theoretical support for intercity industrial linkages and spatial planning. Key findings are as follows. First, digital transformation significantly drives future industrial development, whereas green transformation shows mainly long-term effects. The synergy between digitalization and green transformation compensates for the short-term limitations of green transformation, enabling joint short-term and long-term promotion of future industrial development. Second, the synergy advances development through three pathways: attracting green financial investment, strengthening green innovation capabilities, and optimizing industrial structure. Third, heterogeneity analysis reveals that the synergistic effects are stronger in larger cities, in cities with more developed digital economies, and in cities with higher environmental awareness. Fourth, this synergy generates significant spatial spillover effects, facilitating coordinated industrial layouts across cities. Overall, this study deepens our understanding of the drivers of future industrial development, the mechanisms through which dual transformations empower that development, and the spatial heterogeneity of these processes. This study offers several policy implications. First, it highlights that digital transformation can empower future industrial development by accelerating industrial digitalization and digital industrialization, thus promoting the advancement of Digital China and consolidating the digital dividends in industrial growth. Second, guided by sustainable development principles, policymakers should formulate long-term plans to extend the benefits of green transformation to a broader range of industries. Additionally, it is crucial to fully leverage the synergistic effect of dual transformation—“1+1>2”—to ensure that green dividends are delivered more swiftly and reliably to industrial development. Third, understanding the mechanisms through which dual transformation impacts future industrial development can harness green finance, innovation capacity, and industrial layout as new drivers for industrial growth. Finally, the synergistic integration of digitalization and green transformation demonstrates significant spatial spillover effects. This integration facilitates the coordinated development of digital and green industries across cities, thereby unlocking their spatial potential for future industrial growth.

As an intrinsic requirement and a crucial focal point for achieving high-level technological self-reliance and driving high-quality economic and social development in China, the cultivation and formation of new quality productive forces represent a complex process confronted with multifaceted theoretical and practical challenges that require systematic investigation and urgent resolution. This process fundamentally depends on the emergence of revolutionary technological breakthroughs to provide sustained momentum and structural support for its advancement. Within this context, understanding the foundational mechanism of technological formation and fostering the emergence of breakthrough technologies have become critical priorities for China's innovation-driven strategy.

Building upon the theoretical foundation of knowledge recombination, this study systematically investigates how specific characteristics of knowledge recombination—primarily knowledge distance and knowledge diversity—influence the formation of breakthrough technologies. The study further examines the moderating role of inventor collaboration intensity, making a critical distinction between inter-organizational and intra-organizational cooperation. To empirically validate the proposed theoretical framework, we constructed a comprehensive dataset comprising patent records from the United States synthetic biology sector spanning the period from 2004 to 2021. This sector constitutes an ideal empirical setting due to its inherently interdisciplinary nature, rapid knowledge obsolescence, and high-stakes innovation environment. These characteristics collectively create an amenable context for examining the dynamics between knowledge recombination and breakthrough technological outcomes.

The empirical analysis yields several significant findings that contribute to both theoretical understanding and practical application. First, the research confirms that both knowledge distance and knowledge diversity maintain inverted U-shaped relationships with the formation of breakthrough technologies. This nonlinear pattern suggests that while moderate levels of knowledge heterogeneity stimulate novel connections and creative synthesis, excessive cognitive distance or overwhelming diversity may exceed organizational absorption capacities and impede meaningful knowledge integration. Second, regarding contextual moderators, the intensity of inter-organizational collaboration significantly strengthens these observed inverted U-shaped relationships between knowledge recombination characteristics and technological breakthroughs. Conversely, intra-organizational collaboration demonstrates no statistically significant moderating effect. This differential impact highlights the unique value of cross-organizational partnerships in introducing complementary knowledge stocks, diverse problem-solving approaches, and alternative interpretive frameworks that collectively enhance the innovative potential of knowledge recombination processes.

This research makes substantive contributions to the theoretical discourse surrounding the origins and drivers of breakthrough technologies by providing nuanced insights into the complex interplay between knowledge structures, collaborative contexts, and innovative outcomes. From a practical perspective, the findings offer valuable guidance for scholars, innovation policymakers, and organizational leaders—particularly within China's ongoing pursuit of technological sovereignty and quality-driven development. By strategically configuring knowledge portfolios, optimizing collaboration patterns, and implementing governance mechanisms that foster productive cross-boundary exchanges, organizations and nations can systematically enhance their capacity to generate transformative technologies and accelerate the cultivation of new quality productive forces in strategic emerging sectors.

This study has theoretical and empirical contributions, but it also has limitations that point to future research. First, the generalizability of the findings, derived from synthetic biology, requires further validation. Second, the underlying mechanisms for the distinct effects of technologically-measured versus semantically-measured knowledge recombination on breakthrough technology remain unclear. Finally, while we examine the macro-level moderating role of collaboration, future work should investigate its micro-level foundations.

Breaking through the composite barriers in key core technologies is a necessary path to achieving technological self-reliance and strength. Based on the knowledge gap, path dependence and niche lock-in analytical framework, our paper systematically reveals the formation mechanisms of the triple barriers: Knowledge gap manifests as a dual imbalance between the fragmentation of explicit knowledge and the interruption in the inheritance of tacit knowledge. To break through it, a full-chain reconstruction mechanism is required, which includes the systematic integration of explicit knowledge, the explicit transformation of tacit knowledge, and the iterative optimization of knowledge systems; Path dependence arises from the self-solidification of technological systems, the synergistic lock-in of industrial chains, and the constraints of institutional combinations. To achieve trajectory transition, it is necessary to carry out modular decomposition of technical architectures, reconstruct technical standards, and design flexibly adjustable policy tools, among other measures. Niche Lock-in, in essence, refers to the multi-dimensional power solidification of technical standards, institutional rules, and knowledge networks. Achieving niche climbing relies on synergistic strategies including the reorganization of technical architectures, the remolding and integration of institutional rules, and the cognitive reconstruction of knowledge power. Furthermore, there exists a dynamic correlation between the triple barrier-breaking paths: knowledge reconstruction provides theoretical support for the leap of technological trajectories, the leap of technological trajectories creates interface conditions for niche ascension, and niche ascension feeds back to drive the innovation of knowledge production, thus forming a positive cycle that starts from knowledge reconstruction, moves to the leap of technological trajectories, then to niche ascension, and finally returns to knowledge reconstruction.

Based on the above conclusions, the following implications are derived: ① Establish a knowledge factor transformation system to resolve the dilemma of tacit knowledge inheritance. A national industrial knowledge graph platform should be built to integrate multimodal perception technologies and systematically capture high-dimensional tacit knowledge. ② Innovate dynamic policy tools to address the dilemma of technological trajectory lock-in. It is necessary to design a special policy package for intergenerational technological leaps and embed a flexible buffer mechanism to cope with path dependence. ③ Implement an innovation ecosystem power restructuring project to break through standard nesting blockades. A technological standard upgrading plan should be launched, and a mechanism for transforming international rules on standard nesting should be established. ④ Improve the collaborative barrier-breaking mechanism to enhance systematic evolution capability. An industry-university-research-government collaborative platform covering barrier diagnosis, path adaptation, and innovation ecosystem restructuring should be constructed, and a real-time monitoring indicator system for the three types of barriers should be developed.

In recent years, "involutionary competition" has emerged as a salient and defining feature of China's new energy vehicle (NEV) industry. Between 2018 and 2024, approximately 400 NEV firms exited the market amid intensified price wars, excessive capacity expansion, and escalating cost pressures. While involutionary competition may initially accelerate market selection and resource reallocation, prolonged competition driven by aggressive price-cutting and extreme cost compression has increasingly undermined technological innovation, distorted industrial ecosystems, and constrained high-quality development. Against this backdrop, a critical question arises: how can firms break through involutionary traps and construct sustainable competitive advantages under conditions of persistent and system-wide competitive pressure?

Existing studies on involution primarily adopt a macro-institutional perspective, emphasizing policy regulation, industrial governance, and the restoration of market order. These studies have contributed valuable insights into the structural and institutional origins of involutionary competition, particularly the role of government intervention in shaping industry dynamics. However, they provide limited explanations of how firms, at the organizational level, respond to and survive under sustained involutionary pressure. This limitation is especially evident in the NEV industry, where rapid technological iteration, high capital intensity, and converging technological trajectories expose firms to continuous environmental shocks. As a result, the micro-level mechanisms through which firms adapt to involution and achieve strategic breakthroughs remain theoretically underexplored.

To address this gap, this study introduces an organizational flexibility perspective and develops a process-oriented analytical framework to explain how firms achieve the continuous emergence of competitive advantages in involutionary environments. Drawing on theories of organizational flexibility and emergence, this research conceptualizes competitive advantage not as a deliberately designed or static outcome, but as an evolutionary process shaped by ongoing interactions between firms and their environments. Organizational flexibility is understood as a firm's capacity to adjust resource configurations, strategic orientations, and organizational arrangements in response to environmental disturbances. Extending prior static interpretations, this study emphasizes the dynamic evolution of flexibility itself under sustained competitive pressure.

Methodologically, this research adopts a comparative case study design, examining XPeng Motors and WM Motor-two Chinese NEV manufacturers that were exposed to similar external conditions but experienced divergent outcomes. By systematically comparing a "breakthrough" firm with an "exited" firm, this study constructs an analytical framework of "involutionary environment-flexible construction-advantage emergence" to reveal how different flexibility trajectories shape organizational evolution. The comparative approach enables the identification of key mechanisms through which flexibility influences firm survival and strategic outcomes under involutionary competition.

The findings reveal three main insights. First, the involutionary environment of the NEV industry evolves through three distinct stages: uncertainty, structural convergence, and polarization. Each stage imposes different adaptive pressures on firms. Second, under escalating involutionary pressure, organizational flexibility evolves from foundational flexibility to partial flexibility and ultimately to global flexibility. Foundational flexibility enables low-cost experimentation and rapid adjustment in uncertain environments; partial flexibility supports coordinated responses at critical organizational nodes; and global flexibility integrates resources, structures, and strategies into a system-wide adaptive capability. Third, driven by the evolution of flexibility, firms' competitive advantages emerge along a continuous path, progressing from agile trial-and-error advantages to path-based collaboration advantages and finally to system-level synergy advantages.

This study makes three primary theoretical contributions. First, it develops a process model that explains firm breakout mechanisms within China's involutionary context, thereby localizing organizational theory to a distinctive competitive environment. Second, it extends organizational flexibility theory by demonstrating how flexibility dynamically evolves under high-frequency environmental disturbances. Third, it reconceptualizes competitive advantage as a multi-stage emergent process driven by flexible evolution rather than static resource endowments.

As a core strategic resource in the era of artificial intelligence, the establishment of a governance system for computility is an urgent requirement for the modernization of national governance. This paper proposes for the first time the theoretical framework of "computility governance," elucidating its connotations through dual dimensions of resource attributes and instrumental attributes. In the resource dimension, computility as a novel derived resource necessitates addressing challenges such as sovereignty assurance, resource allocation, and cross-domain interoperability, enhancing national resource control capabilities through institutional design. In the instrumental dimension, computility empowers the modernization of national governance through dynamic adaptation, symbiotic governance, and digital-intelligent applications to enhance governance efficacy. Computility governance must transcend traditional resource governance paradigms to construct a novel framework aligned with its unique characteristics. Future efforts should innovate resource allocation models, reshape national governance logic, and promote the transformation of global power structures, achieving a transition from "technology adaptation" to "institutional empowerment," thereby providing a new governance paradigm for the era of digital civilization.

Artificial intelligence model distillation, as a key technology driving lightweight deployment of large models, serves as the core pathway for achieving “AI+” industrial integration. However, during its technological diffusion, it faces governance challenges stemming from inadequate intellectual property system adaptability. AI model distillation refers to the process of transferring knowledge from a pre-trained large teacher model to a lightweight student model through strategies such as softening the output distribution. This achieves model compression, enabling cost-effective and efficient deployment on terminal devices like smartphones and intelligent robots. Model distillation can be categorized into three approaches: soft label distillation, feature map distillation, and relational distillation. These correspond respectively to the distribution probability data output by the teacher model, the feature data input to the teacher model, and the inference process data from input to output within the teacher model. These data may potentially hold intellectual property rights. The distribution probability data output by the teacher model, the feature data input to it, and the inference process data from input to output may constitute works. If student model developers improperly replicate these data through model distillation, they may infringe copyright. If the aforementioned data constitute trade secrets, model distillation may infringe trade secrets by constituting improper means or violating confidentiality obligations. Distillation practices violating user agreements carry risks of breach of contract or unfair competition. Regarding these issues, international practice presents two typical models: the open innovation model, exemplified by DeepSeek, aims to achieve effective information utilization and sharing through open-source intellectual property initiatives, thereby reducing subsequent innovation costs. For copyright protection, it advocates automated, permissive open-source copyright licenses with licensed and restricted content; for trade secret protection, it proposes that open-source initiatives waive trade secret protection for much of the teacher model's data. Regarding unfair competition and breach of contract, it advocates for relatively lenient user agreements to completely exempt model distillation from breach of contract and unfair competition risks. The anti-competition model, exemplified by OpenAI, prohibits distillation through closed-source technology and strict agreements. Regarding copyright protection, it restricts other developers from directly appropriating the trainer model's data through closed-source models. It also supplements copyright protection by limiting other developers' use of model outputs for distillation via user agreements when copyright law rules are ambiguous. For trade secret protection, it safeguards the model's data as trade secrets through closed-source models and expands the scope of trade secret rights by restricting reverse engineering by other developers via user agreements. Regarding unfair competition and breach of contract, user agreements restrict model distillation by other developers, strengthening protection of their intangible competitive advantage—first-mover advantage. Open innovation pathways accelerate technological accessibility, foster innovation ecosystems, control industry standards and regulatory discourse, and counter external technological blockades and competitive pressures. Thus, they better align with China's industrial needs and scientific development patterns. China should cultivate an intellectual property-friendly industrial environment to promote open innovation models. It is recommended that, while respecting open-source agreements, China systematically resolve intellectual property conflicts in technology diffusion by clarifying copyright law rules for model distillation and defining the scope of anti-distillation agreements. This will foster a supportive institutional environment for AI technological innovation.

Against the backdrop of advancing high-level technological self-reliance, data asset disclosure has become a critical lever for firms to build competitive advantages in digital technological innovation. Based on panel data from Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies during 2012-2023, this study employs a fixed-effects panel regression model to empirically examine the impact of data asset disclosure on corporate digital innovation.The findings reveal that data asset disclosure significantly promotes both the quantity and quality of digital innovation. Heterogeneity analyses show that the disclosure effect on innovation quality is more pronounced among manufacturing firms, while non-manufacturing firms primarily benefit in terms of innovation quantity. The impact of disclosing self-use data assets is stronger than that of transactional data assets. Furthermore, technology-intensive firms experience greater improvement in innovation quality.Mediation and moderation analyses indicate that enhanced positioning in technology trading networks serves as a key mediating mechanism. Moreover, intellectual property (IP) protection positively moderates the relationship between data asset disclosure and innovation quantity, but has no significant effect on innovation quality. This study offers practical guidance for enterprises seeking technological upgrading through data asset strategies and provides policy implications for improving data disclosure regulations.

Digital technology has brought an end to the era where enterprises pursued innovation alone. Digital collaborative innovation, an innovative activity centered on digital innovation and conducted through multi-agent collaboration, is the result of the integration of digital innovation and collaborative innovation. Based on multi-agent collaboration, enterprises can easily break through technological barriers, expand their innovation networks, and unleash the vitality of innovation factors. A favorable intellectual property environment is an important factor in promoting cross-organizational collaborative innovation. Existing research has treated the construction of intellectual property demonstration cities as a quasi-natural experiment, discussing its impact on innovation, collaborative innovation, or digital innovation separately. However, how does the impact of intellectual property demonstration cities affect enterprise digital collaborative innovation, which centers on digital innovation and adopts the form of collaborative innovation? This topic has rarely been discussed in existing literature. With the accelerated penetration of digital technology in product collaborative innovation and industrial chain collaborative innovation, digital technology innovation consortia have become increasingly important; revealing the conditional mechanisms through which intellectual property demonstration cities trigger enterprise digital collaborative innovation holds theoretical value and practical significance.

Based on data from A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2023, this paper uses the construction of intellectual property demonstration cities as a quasi-natural experiment, characterizes digital collaborative innovation using jointly authorized digital patents, and examines the effects and mechanisms of intellectual property demonstration cities on digital collaborative innovation. The research finds that the construction of intellectual property demonstration cities has promoted an average increase of 22% in the rate of digital collaborative innovation among enterprises, indicating that public policies on intellectual property rights help to solve the property rights challenges of cross-organizational digital innovation and open up the channel for enterprises to integrate digital and physical innovation. Heterogeneity tests reveal that the impact of intellectual property demonstration cities on digital collaborative innovation only exists in the local creation effect, with no significant spatial spillover; enterprises with weak digital innovation foundations, those experiencing initial growth stages, and private "weak" enterprises are more likely to leverage public policies on intellectual property rights to gain the "wings" of digital-creative collaboration. In terms of mechanisms, enhancing multi-agent relationship connections, promoting the diffusion of basic research, and strengthening intellectual property enforcement are all important mechanisms through which intellectual property demonstration cities promote digital collaborative innovation among enterprises.

The potential academic contributions of this paper lie in the following aspects: Firstly, from a research perspective, this paper is an early empirical literature that examines the impact of intellectual property policies on enterprise digital collaborative innovation from the micro perspective of the interactive integration of digital innovation and collaborative innovation. Secondly, in terms of empirical strategy, this paper employs a multi-period difference-in-differences model to identify the causal relationship between intellectual property demonstration policies and enterprise digital collaborative innovation, providing incremental evidence for how to build a digital innovation consortium. Thirdly, in terms of mechanism analysis, this paper clarifies the theoretical mechanism through which the construction of intellectual property demonstration cities promotes enterprise digital collaborative innovation from three aspects: enhancing multi-agent relationship connections, promoting the diffusion of basic research, and strengthening intellectual property law enforcement. This provides theoretical guidance and practical insights for improving the intellectual property system, strengthening product collaborative innovation and building a digital innovation consortium.

Innovation is the fundamental engine of economic growth, and basic research constitutes the cornerstone of long-term technological advancement. Unlike applied research, whose outcomes can be privately appropriated through patents or trade secrets, basic research produces knowledge with strong public-good characteristics and positive externalities. While universities and public institutes have traditionally dominated this domain, firms are increasingly emerging as important contributors. In 2023, business enterprises accounted for 77.7% of R&D expenditures in China, although Chinese firms still lag in both the scale and intensity of such activities relative to advanced economies. Using firm-level panel data from Shanghai high-technology enterprises between 2008 and 2018, this paper provides new evidence on the patterns, motivations, and innovation effects of firms' basic research. Empirically, we document robust positive effects of firms' academic publications on technological output. Each additional firm-authored academic paper is associated with a 1.7% increase in total invention patent applications and a 0.8% increase in breakthrough patent applications (measured as patents among the top 20% by citations within their primary classification). Mechanism tests indicate that the effects operate through three channels: (i) increased knowledge density (higher forward and backward citation intensities), (ii) expanded technological boundaries (more newly entered technology fields and patents covering new fields), and (iii) enhanced economic value of inventions (larger claim counts and claim lengths). We further document heterogeneous effects across industries. The positive impact of basic research on breakthrough innovation is stronger in industries with greater R&D human capital intensity, while mere R&D expenditure intensity does not amplify the effect. Industries with strong product-based technological revenues exhibit larger research-driven gains, while sectors dominated by service-based technology revenues show weaker effects. These findings yield three main contributions. First, by analyzing a large and representative sample of roughly 63,000 science and technology enterprises, the paper provides new high-quality micro evidence that firms in an emerging economy are increasingly engaging in basic research. Second, it identifies direct productivity linkages from firm basic research to applied R&D outputs and technological breakthroughs, complementing prior literature that emphasized indirect reputational or absorptive channels. Third, the study demonstrates that corporate basic research can generate breakthrough innovations that strengthen firms' sustainable competitive advantage, suggesting a viable pathway for innovation upgrading in emerging markets. From a policy perspective, the results imply targeted public interventions. Because basic research is high-risk and generates diffuse externalities that may discourage private investment, governments should expand dedicated funding for corporate basic research, particularly for small and medium-sized high-tech firms, and enhance tax incentives (for example, higher R&D tax credits for basic research expenditures). Policy design should be sector-sensitive: industries with dense R&D human capital and product-oriented technological returns merit stronger support to catalyze core technology breakthroughs. Finally, since basic research depends critically on highly educated personnel, policymakers should facilitate talent mobility and firm-university collaboration through joint research centers, industry-academia chairs, and flexible arrangements that allow researchers to hold part-time or full-time positions across institutions.

Entrepreneurship, as one of the core driving forces of economic vitality, continuously injects fresh blood and growth momentum into the high-quality economic development by providing employment, industrial upgrading and structural transformation. Meanwhile, standards, as the institutional cornerstone for the construction of a unified national market, provide an important guarantee for the prosperity and development of the urban entrepreneurial ecosystem. Since 2016, the State Council has successively approved five provinces including Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, Shanxi and Guangdong to launch national comprehensive reform pilot actions for standardization. Each region focused on areas such as technological innovation, public services and internationalization environment, and carried out comprehensive governance reforms in aspects such as standardization system construction, institutional mechanisms and supply capacity. Based on the theory of entrepreneurial ecosystem, the implementation of the national comprehensive reform pilot policies for standardization is regarded as a quasi-natural experiment. Using the panel data of 277 prefecture-level cities in China from 2007 to 2022, a multi-time-point difference-in-differences model was constructed to examine the empowerment effect of standardization governance on urban entrepreneurial vitality and the influencing mechanism. The research findings are as follows: (1) The standardized governance actions represented by Chinese Standardization Comprehensive Reform Pilot significantly enhanced the entrepreneurial activity of cities. This conclusion remained valid after a series of robustness tests such as parallel trend test, placebo test, substitution of dependent variables, and change of research methods; (2) The mechanism test indicates that technological innovation clustering and public service optimization played a mediating role in activating the entrepreneurial vitality of cities through standardized governance, while the enrichment of human resources and high-level opening-up positively regulated the incentive effect of standardized governance on the level of urban entrepreneurship; (3) The enhancement effect of the national comprehensive reform pilot policies on the entrepreneurial activity of cities varies due to different urban characteristics such as geographical location, education investment, industrial environment and marketization degree. Specifically, the entrepreneurial incentive effect of standardized governance is more obvious in northern cities, cities with greater education investment, better industrial environment and higher marketization degree. The research conclusions of this paper provide new ideas for activating the urban entrepreneurial ecosystem, explore the boundaries of standardized governance, and offer certain references for building a unified national market and promoting high-quality economic development. The possible contributions of this paper are as follows: First, by constructing a quasi-natural experiment based on the national comprehensive reform pilot of standardization, this paper for the first time evaluated and demonstrated the entrepreneurial incentive effect of standardized governance, not only expanding the influence boundary of standardized policies, but also enriching the entrepreneurial research system in the Chinese context from the institutional level. Second, based on the comprehensive application of the entrepreneurial ecosystem theory and Schumpeter's innovation theory, this paper deeply reveals the internal mechanism of standardized governance activating the urban entrepreneurial ecosystem from multiple aspects such as technological innovation, public services, human resources endowment and opening-up, enriching the research content of government policies' impact on urban entrepreneurship, and also based on geographical location and urban characteristics, carefully examines the heterogeneity facts of policy effect. Third, starting from stimulating the entrepreneurial vitality of cities, this paper connects the formulation of government policies and the commercial behavior of market entities from the perspective of standardized governance, providing a theoretical logic and empirical evidence for the combination of an active government and an effective market to jointly exert efforts and promote innovation development.

In today's era marked by fragility, anxiety, non-linearity, and incomprehensibility, the “thrust” generated by societal progress and the “resistance” shaped by risk scenarios continue to accumulate, making long-term equilibrium elusive. This dynamic places enterprises in a perpetual state of tension where crisis and opportunity coexist within their operations and management. The cultural and tourism industry is highly sensitive to safety issues. Persistent crisis scenarios triggered by both internal industry factors and external elements — such as natural, social, political, and economic forces — can pose significant threats to the normal operations and survival of cultural and tourism enterprises. In navigating external crises, organizational resilience serves as the key to value creation through the cultivation of endogenous capabilities. The organizational resilience of cultural and tourism enterprises refers to the corresponding capacity for resistance, adaptation, and innovation formed through adopting appropriate resource allocation methods during the pre-crisis, crisis, and post-crisis response phases. It not only determines a cultural and tourism enterprise's adaptability to unexpected obstacles but also underpins its long-term success and sustainability. When confronted with setbacks, a resilient enterprise can swiftly adjust strategies and identify new growth opportunities. Based on resource action view, this paper examines four representative cases of cultural tourism enterprises to analyze the development of organizational resilience and the role of utility in value creation. The findings are as follows: (1) The formation of organizational resilience of cultural tourism enterprises follows the logic of "external crisis impact - internal resource arrangement - organizational ability", and its effectiveness follows the logic of "organizational ability - resource action - value creation". (2) The impact of organizational resilience on the value creation of cultural tourism enterprises is primarily seen in three areas: economic value, social value, and environmental value. Additionally, there is a positive mediating role of resource action between organizational resilience and value creation. (3) Cultural tourism enterprises, regardless of their property rights, follow the same fundamental logic in developing organizational resilience and achieving value creation. However, there are significant differences in resource arrangement and resource action paths. From the perspective of formation processes, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) adopt resource divestiture strategies during crises and resource expansion strategies afterward, in contrast to private enterprises. Regarding the utilization of resources, SOEs gain government support through resource coordination pathways; private enterprises formulate suitable development strategies via resource linkage pathways; and SOEs also emphasize industrial chain integration through resource enrichment pathways. The contribution of this article lies in relying on the underlying logic of resilience shaping, incorporating resilience shaping and utility exertion into the analysis of the enterprise value creation process, and comprehensively depicting the formation process of organizational resilience in cultural and tourism enterprises and its impact path on value creation. A new connection path of "organizational resilience - resource action - value creation" is proposed, expanding the explanatory boundary of the resource action theory. It also clarifies the logic of how resource actions form capabilities and how they drive value creation, providing a new cognitive perspective for enterprises to achieve value creation in a highly uncertain environment.

By creating a novel theoretical framework based in the sociology of science but adapted to China's particular state-led system, this study tackles the ongoing problem of scientific misconduct in the country's research landscape. China has a disproportionately high retraction rate (0.3%, three times the global average), according to an analysis of global retraction data from 2001 to 2020. There are also clear trends, with emerging science nations like China seeing rising retraction shares that surpass their publication output while established powers saw declines. The prevalence of plagiarism and fabrication gave way to more complex types of misconduct, such as paper mills, which had an especially negative effect on the fields of biology and medicine during China's explosive rise in these domains. Historically, universities were the main providers, but in the past ten years, hospitals—which are primarily associated with paper mills—have risen to over half of retractions.

These patterns reveal the shortcomings of Western-centric theories such as Merton's concept of "priority" competition. This framework positions China's "Competition for Meritocracy" (You Sheng Quan) as fundamental. Government dominance fosters a resource allocation model characterized by "competition for excellence," compelling researchers to engage in intense rivalry during a "shortlist-selection" process. Success is fundamentally dependent not on absolute "priority" but on attaining relative superiority within a candidate pool, reflecting the principles of "meritocracy." This generates distinct pressure dynamics: the main stressor is uncertainty stemming from the performance escalation of peers within the cohort, rather than from fixed benchmarks. Accelerated average peer growth significantly increases pressure, which, when it surpasses the limitations of national integrity policies and scientific self-regulation, results in misconduct.

This framework underwent empirical validation via a rigorous micro-level quantitative analysis of Chinese biology researchers, a field characterized by high levels of misconduct. A matched-pair sample was created consisting of 116 researchers with retractions from 2001 to 2020, paired with 116 controls matched on institution, department, gender, age, education, career stage, and honors, but lacking retractions. The longitudinal career and performance data from 2001 to 2020 resulted in an unbalanced panel comprising 3,920 observations. Logistic regression incorporating time fixed effects validated the primary hypotheses. 1) Increased perceived competitive pressure, indicated by the deviation of individual publication growth from personal moving averages, significantly elevated the probability of misconduct; 2) Accelerated average peer publication growth within the department (lagged) notably heightened misconduct, supporting the peer-driven pressure mechanism; 3) The existence of an active institutional misconduct policy substantially diminished the pressure-misconduct relationship, highlighting the essential role of organizational governance in mitigation.

Consequently, the persistence of misconduct in China is fundamentally rooted in the systemic pressures arising from competition for relative status within a meritocratic allocation framework. Effective solutions necessitate structural reform: shifting resource allocation from solely competitive selection to hybrid models that include thresholds; enhancing the governance capacity of research organizations to enforce integrity policies; and promoting collaborative ecosystems to reduce hyper-competition and redirect research towards meaningful innovation. Addressing these systemic drivers is essential for ensuring sustainable research integrity in China and comparable contexts.

Against the backdrop of rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and the accelerating reshaping of the global technological competition landscape, interdisciplinary integration has increasingly become a critical driver of technological breakthroughs and knowledge innovation. Particularly amid intensifying Sino-American technological rivalry, comparing the differences in AI interdisciplinary knowledge integration paths across countries is of significant practical relevance for optimizing innovation strategies and enhancing competitive resilience. However, existing studies have predominantly focused on AI theory development, technological innovation, and overall trends, with relatively limited systematic exploration of AI’s interdisciplinary knowledge system and its evolutionary mechanisms. This gap partially constrains understanding of the intrinsic patterns of AI development and, consequently, limits the ability to seize strategic initiative.

This study draws on the Web of Science (WoS) database, selecting 89,448 valid publications up to December 31, 2024, and constructs an integrated research framework encompassing “topic identification - structural analysis - mechanism comparison”. First, employing the BERTopic modeling method, the study identifies representative interdisciplinary topics in AI and characterizes their features in terms of knowledge sources, integration depth, and structural types by introducing disciplinary diversity and cohesion indicators. Second, by analyzing changes in topic intensity and content evolution, it reveals the evolutionary paths and coupling patterns of interdisciplinary knowledge across different stages. Finally, using the United States and China as comparative cases, the study examines differences in topic distribution, structural patterns, and driving mechanisms, exploring how institutional logic, organizational forms, and resource allocation shape interdisciplinary integration.

The findings indicate that the AI field has formed a complex interdisciplinary knowledge system composed of 23 heterogeneous topics, with significant variation across topics in disciplinary sources, integration depth, and structural complexity, displaying a combination of parallel paradigms, heterogeneous integration, and structural coupling. The evolution of interdisciplinary knowledge typically follows a cyclical process, progressing from the introduction of heterogeneous elements to the integration of methodological paradigms and the differentiation of new subfields, with coupling realized through multi-layered nested coordination between core and interface disciplines. International comparison shows that the U.S. emphasizes paradigm-driven, system-level diffusion, relying on open collaboration and multi-actor participation to promote parallel exploration across multiple directions, whereas China exhibits an engineering- and application-driven pattern, emphasizing concentrated resource mobilization and rapid integration, resulting in goal-focused and outcome-oriented pathways. These mechanistic differences not only influence the pace and direction of knowledge evolution but also shape each country’s relative advantages in frontier leadership and applied breakthroughs.

The study proposes high-level strategic directions for enhancing China’s interdisciplinary integration capacity and systemic innovation resilience in AI, including the development of heterogeneous coupling platforms, optimization of project and collaboration mechanisms, and the cultivation of interface discipline ecosystems. The research systematically extends the characterization of interdisciplinary knowledge structures, the identification of evolutionary paths, and comparative analysis of U.S. and Chinese mechanisms, offering a generalizable analytical framework and methodological approach. It deepens understanding of the patterns and mechanisms of interdisciplinary integration in AI and provides a novel theoretical perspective for studying the complexity of technological convergence. By elucidating cross-national differences in interdisciplinary innovation paths and driving logics, the study provides scholarly support and practical guidance for formulating forward-looking AI development strategies and strenthening competitiveness global technological competition.

Intelligent Connected Vehicles (ICVs), as intelligent entities deeply involved in constructing social order in the AI era, shift the focus to transportation—a dimension often overlooked in mainstream communication studies—thereby establishing a theoretical foundation for highlighting their significance in communication studies. Under current socio-technological conditions, the interactive activities jointly participated in by humans and ICVs epitomize the reality of human-machine integrated communication. The technological evolution and social embeddedness of ICVs reveal the practical role of such integration.In terms of technological evolution, ICVs establish cross-node connectivity among humans, vehicles, infrastructure, and networks. Building upon this foundation, large-scale AI models trigger interaction generalization, ultimately transcending "geofencing" and bridging spatial divides. Regarding social embeddedness, ICVs provide a preliminary basis for constructing a "multi-scalar communicable" environment and fostering barrier-free societies. However, they also face two paradoxes: energy consumption and unemployment crises, while legal and ethical dilemmas remain unresolved issues.

Constructing open digital platforms is essential for industrial enterprises to achieve digital transformation and ecological synergy. However, systematic research on integrating external innovation capabilities with internal business systems through platform openness remains limited. This study employs a longitudinal case analysis of five pioneering industrial enterprises to elucidate the construction path and ecological synergy mechanisms of open digital platform capabilities. Findings reveal: (1) The construction of these capabilities follows a three-stage progression “open infrastructure—ecological synergy expansion—value co-creation iteration,” characterized by phases of “connection—symbiosis—evolution.” (2) “Digital-ecological” capabilities, facilitated by “introduction—collaboration—governance” strategies, achieve synergies across “technical interfaces—resource networks—rule systems,” transforming the platform from an instrumental infrastructure to an innovation ecosystem hub. This research reveals the dynamic laws of open digital platform capability construction, expands the intersection of open digital platform theory and ecosystem research, and provides actionable insights for industrial enterprises to accelerate ecological transformation through open strategies.

The scientifically and rationally delineation of fiscal authority and expenditure responsibilities in the field of science and technology is a key institutional arrangement for deepening fiscal and scientific reform, holding significant strategic importance for enhancing the overall effectiveness of the national innovation system. Against the backdrop of accelerating the implementation of the innovation-driven development strategy and building a world-class science and technology power, clarifying the roles of governments at all levels in science and technology governance and establishing a stable and efficient fiscal support mechanism are of great practical significance for stimulating societal innovation vitality and achieving high-quality economic development. This study takes the three major coastal urban agglomerations in China—representative samples with the most active innovation activities and cutting-edge reform practices—as the focus. It employs a mixed research methodology combining qualitative case analysis and quantitative empirical research: On one hand, the study conducts an in-depth analysis of the three coastal urban agglomerations, using the Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center as a typical case to outline and summarize the pathways and outcomes of fiscal authority and expenditure responsibility reforms in the scientific and technological sector. On the other hand, guided by the Reform Plan for the Division of Fiscal Authority and Expenditure Responsibility Between the Central and Local Governments in the Scientific and Technological Sector, the study constructs a difference-in-differences model and empirically examines the impact of fiscal authority reforms on innovation capacity using panel data from the three coastal urban agglomerations.

Research findings: (1) The reform of fiscal responsibilities and expenditure obligations in the science and technology sector has a significant enhancing effect on innovation capabilities. This indicates that clearly defining the fiscal responsibilities of governments at various levels in different types of scientific and technological activities can effectively optimize the innovation governance structure, thereby unleashing innovation vitality and improving innovation capabilities. (2) The reform’s role in promoting innovation capabilities is primarily achieved through two mechanisms: First, it reduces the misallocation of innovation resources by optimizing the distribution of scientific and technological resources across levels and fields through more rational fiscal responsibility delineation, effectively correcting distorted resource allocation between departments and regions and improving the overall input-output efficiency of the innovation system. Second, it enhances the vibrancy of innovation and entrepreneurship by establishing a stable and predictable fiscal support framework and precisely guiding social capital, which greatly incentivizes innovation and entrepreneurial activities among various market entities such as enterprises and researchers, fostering a more dynamic regional innovation ecosystem.(3) The policy effects of the reform exhibit important amplification mechanisms. The study reveals that increasing talent recruitment intensity and boosting research and development investment intensity are two key positive moderating variables, implying that when fiscal responsibility delineation reform is combined with proactive talent policies and sustained research and development investment, its impact on innovation capabilities will be multiplicatively amplified.The findings of this study hold dual significance. Theoretically, by examining the institutional drivers of innovation capability enhancement from the perspective of fiscal system arrangements, this paper enriches the institutional economics explanation of innovation capability formation and development. Practically, the research conclusions provide direct empirical evidence and policy insights for the coordinated advancement of the new round of fiscal system reform and science and technology system reform.