The impact of geopolitical risks (GPR) on enterprises is significant, yet the existing literature lacks a comprehensive understanding of how GPR affects environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. This study addresses this gap by analysing data from Chinese enterprises over the period 2009 to 2021. It empirically examines the impact of GPR on ESG performance and explores the underlying mechanisms. Specifically, the analysis considers the roles of investor attention and government subsidies as moderating factors. The results indicate that GPR inhibits corporate ESG performance. State-owned enterprises are found to mitigate these adverse effects, while privately-owned enterprises tend to exacerbate them. Mechanism tests reveal that GPR negatively impacts ESG performance by increasing financing constraints and reducing financial performance. Furthermore, increased investor attention and government subsidies can alleviate the negative effects of GPR on ESG performance. These findings offer valuable insights for organisations, governments, and stakeholders, enabling them to better respond to GPR and achieve sustainable development.

The development of rural e-commerce in China is viewed as an opportunity to increase rural income. Using panel data from 592 national-level key poverty-stricken (NLKPS) counties from 2014 to 2020, we confirm that the National Rural E-commerce Comprehensive Demonstration Project (NRECDP), launched by the Chinese government, delivers significant rural income growth for selected counties by providing financial support. Digital inclusive finance has facilitated rural e-commerce development, thereby promoting rural income. Our study uses the endogeneity switching regression (ESR) model to address self-selection bias and finds that NRECDP participation increases rural income by ~12.97%. The determinants of participation in the NRECDP include levels of economic development, e-commerce development, infrastructure development, industry structure, and digital inclusive finance. Additionally, the determinants of rural income include education levels and population density. Moreover, our heterogeneity analysis reveals that the rural income growth effect of NRECDP involvement is more significant for NLKPS counties in non-ethnic regions, central regions, higher industry structures, and the three regions and three prefectures. Additionally, entrepreneurship serves as a potential channel linking NRECDP implementation and rural income growth.

Manufacturing, as an energy-intensive industry, plays a major role in economic growth. Its green growth is the focus of national planning for sustainable development, especially for a country such as Korea, which has a scarcity of fossil energy of its own. While internationalization has brought Korea scarce energy, serious carbon emissions have become a pressing issue. It is still necessary to explore the relationship between globalization and green growth in manufacturing. Thus, our paper aims to observe their relationship by using 24 manufacturing industries from 2011 to 2019. Through the panel Granger non-causality test and the Dumitrescu–Hurlin test, we find that imports and inward foreign direct investment (FDI) causes green growth at the overall manufacturing level, but their causality relationships exist in different industries. The green-growth causality relationship of inward FDI mainly exists in capital-intensive and internationally competitive manufacturing industries (manufacture industries of basic metals; furniture; food products; coke, briquettes, and refined petroleum products; and chemicals and chemical products, except pharmaceuticals and medicinal chemicals). Furthermore, the green-growth causality relationship of imports primarily exists in the fossil-energy-consumption-intensive manufacturing industry (manufacture industries of motor vehicles, trailers, and semitrailers and coke, briquettes, and refined petroleum products). Furthermore, in our regression analysis, we find that only inward FDI robustly promotes the Korean manufacturing sector’s green growth; the positive effect is in the range from 0.005 to 0.009. Though the parameter estimates are positive and significant for FDI, they are close to zero, suggesting very limited positive effects that are close to almost zero. Conversely, imports have no significant impact, which we speculate is related to the import structure of Korea. Hence, the Korean manufacturing development model suggests that developing countries with similar country characteristics need to develop and guide the formation of capital-intensive and competitive industries. Additionally, it is imperative to decarbonize energy-intensive industries and to work on renewable energy development and diffusion. Finally, it is essential to introduce various green monitoring mechanisms to reduce carbon emissions. The government needs to strengthen its support for research and development of innovative technologies to reduce carbon emissions as well as promote the development of environmental and energy-saving related professional service enterprises.

Our study examines the relationship between intellectual property rights protection (IPRP) and carbon emissions (CE) using an unbalanced panel data set from 116 countries spanning 2008–2020. The analysis reveals a positive relationship between IPRP and CE. Mechanism tests and nonlinear analysis further elucidate this relationship. The mediation effect results indicated that IPRP indirectly fostered CE growth by inhibiting energy structure’s improvement, demonstrating that IPRP exacerbated the dependence on traditional high-carbon energy sources, hindering the transition to cleaner, more efficient energy systems. The analysis also revealed that IPRP indirectly promoted the increase of CE by promoting technological progress and economic growth. The moderation effect results suggest that political stability could mitigate the positive impact of IPRP on CE. Furthermore, the analysis reveals an inverted U-shaped relationship between IPRP and CE, indicating that while IPRP promotes an increase in CE in the initial stages, its intensification suppresses CE growth beyond a turning point. Hence, our study provides new theoretical and empirical evidence to understand the complex relationship between IPRP and CE. It also offers policy recommendations for effectively integrating global carbon reduction efforts with intellectual property policies.

To test the impact of international R&D spillovers on China’s technological innovation, we collect and use province-country-level data from 23 provinces from 2001 to 2020 to fill a measurement gap of international R&D spillovers, so that our measurement can avoid ‘aggregation bias’ unlike the calculation methods in previous studies. We find that imports act as an effective international R&D spillover channel for improving technological innovation. Meanwhile, international R&D spillover through inward FDI and imports positively promotes China’s innovation performance. It suggests to policymakers that continuing to open up the economy and attract high-quality inward FDI is still required. Moreover, our results confirm that the eastern region enjoys a more significant international R&D spillover effect because of a more effective innovation environment. Hence, we suggest that given the inherent short board in the central and western regions, preferential policies to make up for this short board should be proposed to improve the innovation environment in the inland regions so as to enjoy a more significant international R&D spillover effect. Finally, we also observe that different periods of economic growth and the development levels of source countries also result in heterogeneous innovation impacts of international R&D spillover effects.