This paper investigates the theory of wealth value from the perspective of new quality productive forces while maintaining the foundation of labor value theory. Labor value theory encompasses two analytical paradigms: value analysis and wealth analysis. Since new quality productive forces represent the productivity of concrete labor, the wealth analysis paradigm can accurately evaluate the productivity effects of new quality productive forces. Wealth is created through the joint contribution of multiple factors including labor, capital, land, knowledge, technology, and management. The role of factors beyond direct labor in wealth creation will become increasingly significant, particularly scientific and technological innovation. Various productive force elements develop new quality productive forces through creative destruction, wherein entrepreneurs function not only as laborers but also as leaders of innovation, and the entrepreneurial factor itself faces creative destruction in the development of new quality productive forces. Capital plays a crucial role in optimizing the combination of new quality productive force elements to enhance total factor productivity. Entering the 21st century, the iterative upgrading of new quality productive forces manifests as: information economy—digital economy—intelligent economy. The digital economy and artificial intelligence introduce three novel factors: data, computing power, and algorithms. Confronted with the intelligent economy paradigm, economic research on wealth growth factors must expand beyond purely material factors (laborers, means of production, and objects of labor) to encompass the three elements of the digital economy. The intelligent economy is grounded in the digital economy with algorithms playing an increasingly prominent role. In the context of the digital and intelligent economies, data, computing power, and algorithms emerge as new factors of wealth creation, bringing disruptive impacts on wealth value creation. They not only substitute for labor but, more importantly, substantially replace direct labor processes. Therefore, research on wealth creation in the intelligent economy cannot be entirely explained through labor processes alone; it must also focus on innovation processes. This necessitates a series of adjustments in production relations, establishing production relations more adapted to new quality productive forces.

Developing a unified national market is a core component of refining the high-level socialist market economy system and a strategic underpinning for advancing Chinese modernization. A unified national market should be characterized by a fair and competitive market environment, a sound and targeted regulatory system, the free flow of factors of production, and the efficient allocation of market resources. The fiscal system constitutes the institutional foundation for developing a unified national market and provides a key guarantee for aligning it with the high-level socialist market economy system. At present, the construction of a unified national market remains constrained by fiscal institutional barriers related to intergovernmental relations, tax system design, and non-tax revenue administration. The vigorous development of the digital economy and other new business formats has further exposed the mismatch between the existing fiscal and taxation system and the requirements of building a unified national market. To advance the development of a unified national market, it is necessary to establish a new type of central-local governance relationship and improve the horizontal fiscal distribution mechanism; improve tax system design and innovate tax collection and administration models; deepen budget management reform and strengthen non-tax revenue administration; and promote the construction of a data-driven fiscal and taxation system to foster a new paradigm of digital governance.

Government attention allocation profoundly shapes policy priorities and governance effectiveness. This study employs five-year plan indicators as an observational window and constructs a “scale-structure” analytical framework for government attention. Through coding and statistical analysis of the indicator columns in 331 prefecture-level 14th Five-Year Plan outlines, it systematically delineates the attention allocation characteristics reflected in local governments’ planning indicator setting. The findings reveal three key patterns. First, the scale of local government attention exhibits a pattern of “overall stability with regional adaptation”: the total number of indicators fluctuates around the national benchmark, and nearly 80% of prefecture-level cities maintain dimensional consistency with the national plan. Second, the structure of local government attention reflects a “prioritization of livelihood issues with a balance of rigidity and flexibility”: livelihood-related indicators account for the highest proportion, averaging over 30%, while binding indicators are maintained within a moderate range and concentrate on environmental governance and baseline livelihood tasks. Third, significant regional disparities exist in attention allocation: the eastern region prioritizes livelihood improvement and technological innovation, the central and western regions remain focused on economic growth, and the northeastern region faces constraints on livelihood investment under transformation pressures. Further analysis indicates that the differentiated allocation of local government attention is closely associated with factors including institutional cycles, resource endowments, and developmental stages. This study extends the measurement approach to government attention and, by leveraging the cross-cycle and institutionalized nature of planning indicators, provides an empirical foundation for understanding the allocation characteristics of local governments’ medium- to long-term attention.

This paper examines, from a philosophical perspective, the profound challenges that artificial intelligence technology poses to human cognitive subjectivity, revealing how the “illusion of understanding” undermines the integrity of knowledge production. The study finds that this illusion manifests as a crisis across three dimensions: in scientific research, the application of AI leads researchers to mistake statistical correlations for causal insights, giving rise to the risk of a “scientific monoculture;” at the technical level, the fluent expression of large language models conceals their statistical nature, as they lack symbolic grounding and causal reasoning capabilities; at the human-computer interaction interface, explainable AI tools induce an “illusion of explanatory depth” that traps users in cognitive inertia. Based on epistemological and philosophy of technology perspectives, this analysis reveals that the root of this crisis lies in the fact that human understanding depends on embodied experience, causal models, and intentionality, whereas AI remains confined to data-driven correlation computation. To overcome this predicament, the paper advocates reconstructing the human-technology-world relationship based on the theory of technological mediation, building a framework of relational responsibility, safeguarding epistemological pluralism, and translating philosophical reflection into technology governance practice through value-sensitive design. Only by reaffirming the autonomous status of the human cognitive subject and maintaining cognitive autonomy through critical coexistence with technology can we enjoy the benefits of AI enhancement without forfeiting the fundamental conditions of what it means to be human.

The 1871 Mudan Incident, in which shipwrecked Ryukyu civilians were killed, triggered political turmoil within Japan. Advocates of the Seikanron (the Conquer Korea Argument) in the Meiji government seized this incident as a pretext to plot an invasion of Taiwan, dispatching spies to gather intelligence long before the formal military campaign. Upon learning of the deaths of the shipwrecked Ryukyu residents, Kabayama Sukenori lobbied aggressively and submitted a covert reconnaissance plan, which gained swift approval with the support of Saigō Takamori and Soejima Taneomi. Japanese agents infiltrated Taiwan in four separate groups to collect strategic intelligence. Kabayama Sukenori personally took part in and supervised field operatives to conduct detailed surveys of Taiwan’s Indigenous communities, then forwarded all gathered intelligence back to Tokyo. The reconnaissance reports supplied by Japanese agents greatly facilitated the Meiji government’s military plan to invade Taiwan. The espionage team led by Kabayama received official promotions in recognition of their valuable reconnaissance service. The Qing central court and local Taiwan authorities failed to implement effective countermeasures against Japanese spies in the early phase of the crisis. After Japan launched its 1874 invasion of Taiwan, the Qing adjusted its governance strategies by opening up mountain frontier areas and carrying out the pacification of Indigenous communities, which constrained Japanese military operations on Taiwan to a certain degree. The successful espionage operations conducted during Japan’s 1874 Taiwan invasion exposed Japan’s intense desire to pursue military aggression and territorial expansion in the wake of the Meiji Restoration. This episode stands as the opening salvo of modern Japanese militarist expansionism.

After the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan in 1949, it relied on honoring Confucius and the anti-communist banner to legitimize its regime. However, by the mid-1960s, the institutional practice of honoring Confucius and granting privileged treatment to descendants of the Sage, established during the training administration era, fell into multiple predicaments of practice and ideology. In 1966, the Kuomintang education authorities implemented a policy of guaranteed university admission for lineal descendants of Confucius and hereditary Sacrificial Officials. Yet this policy met bureaucratic resistance, public backlash, university refusals, and supervisory corrections, triggering a large-scale controversy over educational privileges for descendants of Confucius. This incident forced the Kuomintang authorities to scale back the age-old Confucian sacrificial official system and reduce the special privileges afforded to the Sage’s descendants. It also comprehensively reviewed various preferential treatment systems for examinees with special identities under the symbolic framework of the “Great China” and the policy of “Recovering the Mainland.” This reflects the tensions between the legacy of ancient rituals and examination systems, special admission privileges versus educational equity, and social egalitarian ideas and official ideology under the Kuomintang authoritarian regime in Taiwan.

The modern postal system served as a critical infrastructure in China’s transformation from a traditional state to a modern nation-state. Based on the digitization of the nationwide postal network comprising all postal offices and mail routes in 1936, this study employs complex network analysis to systematically examine the structural maturity of the modern postal network from the perspectives of topological structure, spatial configuration, and historical mechanisms. The findings reveal that although the 1936 postal network achieved basic coverage at the national scale, its topological structure exhibited neither the “scale-free” nor “small-world” characteristics of a mature complex network. Instead, it manifested a form of “weak complexity” constrained by geography and limited state capacity. Empirical analysis demonstrates that the network consisted of 13 subsystems, with numerous yet small-scale modules, displaying a pronounced tendency toward localization and weak centralization. This “weak complexity” reflects the structural limitations of modern China’s state capacity in spatial organization. The deeper causes lie in the following: physical geographical barriers and backward transportation technology impeded the formation of nationwide hubs; the penetration and downward expansion of the postal network relied upon local self-governance and lineage-based ties, resulting in a decentralized grassroots structure. The striking mismatch between the breadth of spatial expansion and the degree of structural maturity ultimately gave rise to a historical condition best characterized as “the network failed to tame space.”

The modern concept of the “stranger” began to take shape in the late 19th century, a period marked by the transition from a “society of acquaintances” to a “society of strangers,” in which mobility played a crucial role. With the emergence of mobile spaces such as train carriages, rental housing, and lodging establishments, encounters between strangers became an everyday experience. How to coexist with strangers thus became a pressing social question of the era, making the ethics of hospitality a key concern in 19th-century British literature. By focusing on the social dynamics among passengers in carriages, landlords and tenants, and cohabiting lodgers, 19th-century British literature illustrates how infrastructures such as trains and hotels drive the structural transformation of hospitality ethics in a mobile society and give rise to contractual forms of spatial negotiation and shared occupancy. Furthermore, through depictions of female passengers and landladies, these narratives interrogate the gendered dimensions of hospitality. Ultimately, British literature not only exposes the complex realities of these interactions but also envisions new ethical possibilities for community among strangers.

The fundamental issue facing labor law in the digital age is the reconfiguration of labor domination brought about by algorithmic control. Through algorithmic dispatching, dynamic pricing, rating and ranking, account control, and automated decision-making, platforms transform the traditional managerial authority of employers into a technology-based, data-driven, and concealed structure of domination, thereby challenging the traditional criteria for identifying subordination based on explicit commands, fixed organizational structures, and contractual forms. The purpose of China’s labor law is to protect the lawful rights and interests of workers and to establish and develop harmonious and stable labor relations. Its theoretical foundations may be summarized as the theory of protecting the right to subsistence, the theory of redressing labor subordination, and the theory of all-round human development. The reconfiguration of labor domination in the digital age presents three challenges to the realization of the purpose of labor law: the concealment of substantive subordination, the reduction of protection to a single dimension, and the superficiality of regulatory measures. To address these challenges, specific criteria for technological subordination should be established to reshape the scope of protection; workers’ procedural participation should be guaranteed to strengthen the protection of their agency; and the protection of workers’ right to development should be institutionalized through training obligations, data portability, and algorithmic labor impact assessments.