Original and iconic concepts are the cornerstone of constructing an independent knowledge system. Critically examining the innovation of the concept of “independence” and the historical predicament of discursive “dependency” holds fundamental and presuppositional significance for building an independent knowledge system. To achieve the refinement from concepts to the construction of an independent knowledge system in Chinese philosophy and social sciences, it is necessary to follow its inherent logic, that is, to take Marxist theory as the soul of thought, ensuring the thoroughness and scientific nature from concept to system construction; to take the practice of Chinese-style modernization as the source of motivation, enhancing the explanatory and integrative power from concept to system construction; to take the excellent traditional Chinese culture as the root of culture, highlighting the subjectivity and nationality from concept to system construction; to take the rules of thought dissemination as the wings of discourse, improving the communicative and influential power from concept to system construction. To advance the construction of an independent knowledge system in China’s philosophy and social sciences, efforts should focus on delving into classical texts and contemporary practical achievements to refine original concepts and systematize knowledge; preserving subjectivity to activate the cultural resources for building an independent knowledge system; upholding openness and inclusiveness to draw on all beneficial achievements of human civilization, thereby highlighting the universal values embedded in the independent knowledge system; and continuously promoting discursive innovation to create a knowledge expression system that integrates Chinese perspectives with international recognition, ultimately achieving the goals of establishing subjectivity, fostering originality, ensuring systemic coherence, and manifesting universal significance. This process of constructing and innovating an independent knowledge system — from concept to system — is not only a necessary path for establishing China’s academic subjectivity but also the epistemological foundation for contributing Chinese wisdom.

Marxist theory holds that productive forces determine the relations of production, while simultaneously requiring specific relations of production to function. To accelerate the development of new quality productive forces, it is imperative to establish relations of production that better accommodate them. Within the context of a socialist market economy, this manifests as a series of high-level institutional arrangements. The foundational institutions of the socialist market economy focus on property rights protection, market access, fair competition, and social credit systems, forming a fundamental institutional framework that underpins the development of new quality productive forces. Comprehensive innovation in institutional mechanisms centres on education, science and technology, and talent development, representing an iterative upgrade of labourers, means of production, and objects of labour. High-level opening-up mechanisms concentrate on steadily expanding institutional openness and actively participating in the reform of the global governance system to foster the development of new quality productive forces. It is necessary to empower new quality productive forces by leveraging the incentive role of primary distribution and the safety net function of livelihood security systems, thereby laying a solid foundation for Chinese-style modernisation.

The emergence of large AI models further highlights the evolution of machine “understanding” at a more fundamental level. Exploring the wonders and hallucinations of natural language processing in large language models, and the lifelike and inaccuracies of text-to-video models simulating the physical world reveals the urgent need to establish an intrinsic connection between context and situation in understanding. The nurturing of context from situations and the contextualization of situation prepared the mechanical ground for understanding. Through the exploration of machine understanding evolution, it can be seen that context and situation constitute a relationship that is both discrete and continuous — forming a context-situation continuum at a more fundamental dimension of understanding evolution. Context-situation continuum, as a bidirectional cyclical information mechanism, not only aligns with the mathematical continuum definition but also resonates with the space-time continuum of general relativity, which constructs a higher-dimensional whole of time and space.

The evolution of the concept of Nation in modern times had once involved the entanglement of dual approaches of French and German, with the former emphasizing unified sovereignty and conscious political will, while the latter emphasized the homology and identity of culture and even blood ties. Primarily following the French approach, the term of Nation was introduced into China and then Japan as Chinese words “国” (kwǒ, state) or “国民” (kokumin, citizen) by the late 19th century. During the middle and late Meiji period, there was a shift towards the German approach, leading to the translation of Nation as “民族” (minzoku), which became entangled with concepts of race and ethnicity. At the end of the Qing dynasty, The influx of new terms from Japan combined with political change in China led to confusion about “民族” (minzu) and related concepts. Politicians and scholars like Liang Qichao and Sun Yat-sen, in light of historical traditions and practical circumstances of China, successively explored the connotations of Nation in the sense of wholly “中华民族” (zhonghua minzu) or “中华国族” (zhonghua guozu), and Gu Jiegang argued from various aspects of theory, history, and reality that “the Chinese Nation is the whole” in 1939. These efforts reflect early attempts to construct local autonomous discourse in the context of globalization of modern knowledge.

This paper utilizes the history of the late 19th-century Po Leung Kuk in Hong Kong as a point of entry to explore potential paths for operationalizing social science theories as historical analytical tools, seeking to provide a modest reference for a profound interdisciplinary dialogue. First, the study uses “refraction theory” to examine the power struggles within the colonial government. It shows that the PLK was not just a charity, but the result of a political victory by officials who favored “delegated governance” through local customs. Second, by combining practice and legitimacy theories, this paper examines how Chinese elites navigated institutional contradictions to codify local customs into legal provisions, achieving self-empowerment and participation in governance through legal validation. Finally, drawing on field theory, the paper analyzes the struggle between officials and elites over the power to define the identities of admitted women. It reveals how marginalized women utilized institutional disparities and behavioral strategies to expand their survival space within the interstitial spaces of power. By grounding theoretical inquiry in empirical evidence, this study not only broadens the perspective on the fields of power emerging from the collision of cross-cultural governance models, but also offers a feasible path for interdisciplinary knowledge complementarity and paradigmatic mutual learning.

In the collision and exchange of Chinese and foreign cultures, the modern Chinese context and its era themes had undergone a progressive transformation and development from enlightenment, revolution, and salvation to liberation. The chivalrous cultural elements in the cultural psychological structure of the new literature writers had been continuously activated by the western cultural trends, and had evolved into positive spiritual forces. The local chivalrous culture had established a spiritual connection with the western cultural trends across time and space, and had undergone varying degrees of value coupling in the vast field of the modern Chinese context. The new literature writers had kept pace with the times and explored up and down. Their chivalrous mentality had gradually generated and constantly transformed under the stimulation of modernity experience. As the artistic reflection and spiritual trace of their chivalrous mentality, the chivalrous writing had presented rich and profound connotations with the changes of the different era contexts, possessing the distinct era characteristics and the spiritual traits of keeping up with the times.

The combined effects of economic transition, social transformation, cultural changes, and digital technological progress have brought about an unprecedented transformation in the concept and behavior of marriage and childbearing from the agricultural society, which had persisted for thousands of years. Starting from the historical and cultural logic of “the mutual construction of family and nation,” and drawing on the early experience of the 1999 “New Marriage and Childbearing norms Entering Thousands of Households” campaign, this paper discusses the promotion strategies for a new-type marriage and childbearing culture in the new era. The social governance logic of “the mutual construction of family and nation” constitutes the theoretical basis for promoting a positive marriage and childbearing culture; the “New Marriage and Childbearing norms Entering Thousands of Households” publicity campaign launched 26 years ago has provided valuable practical experience for the promotion of the new-type marriage and childbearing culture in the new era. The promotion of the new-type marriage and childbearing culture should focus on fostering a positive view of marriage, childbearing and the family, advocating the value concept of “building healthy families through national support, while supporting the nation with numerous healthy families,” and creating a social context that respects marriage and values childbearing. It is also necessary to leverage the technological dividends of the digital and intelligent era, combine normalized promotion with concentrated advocacy and participatory reproductive health support, and build a daily space that is life-friendly, a cultural space that is value-friendly, an institutional space that is policy-friendly, and a social space that is service-friendly. This thus addresses people’s livelihood issues and enhances the people’s sense of happiness, gain, and security.

The uniform application of law is the core requirement of the rule of law, yet there exist theoretical controversies over its realization path under the statutory law system. Some hold that “treating like cases alike” is an exclusive product of the case law system and incompatible with the principle of “adjudication in accordance with the law” under the statutory law system. However, this analytical framework based on the binary opposition between “case law and statutory law” obscures the essence of judicial activities, which lies in conducting “normative practical interpretation” through the adjudication of individual cases. Legal uniformity is not a static formal uniformity merely guaranteed by legislative texts, but an “interpretive uniformity” dynamically generated in history and practice. In countries with a statutory law system, “treating like cases alike” is not an imitation of case law, but an inherent rational requirement of judicial practice and a key mechanism connecting abstract norms with concrete social life and ensuring the consistency of legal interpretation. The Guiding Case System is precisely the institutional response to such inherent requirements, and its essence is to construct a “weak precedent mechanism” so as to promote the formation of interpretive consensus among the legal community. This paper aims to transcend the myth of institutional opposition, demonstrate the profound jurisprudential foundation of “treating like cases alike” in statutory law from the judicial philosophical perspective, and provide a constructive theoretical vision for how Chinese judiciary can achieve a higher level of uniformity in the rule of law through case practice on the premise of abiding by adjudication in accordance with the law.