The sustainable development of agriculture is significant in protecting natural resources, protecting the ecological environment, ensuring food security, and eliminating poverty. Rural road construction promotes the flow of labor and capital between urban and rural areas, and plays a vital role in agricultural production and rural revitalization. This study aims to analyze the effect of rural road construction on the sustainable development of regional agriculture in China. We select five-dimensional indexes of population, society, economy, resources, and environment and use the entropy method to calculate the agricultural sustainable development index of each province in China. Then, we construct the spatial econometric model to explore the influence based on the panel data of 31 provinces in China from 2002 to 2018. The benchmark results show that rural road construction significantly promotes the sustainable development of agriculture; however, it has a negative impact on environmental sustainability, and the influence is lagging. The results are also heterogeneous among regions. Rural road construction has significantly promoted the sustainable development of agriculture in eastern and central areas, but has no significant impact on western regions. The reason is that the siphoning effect caused by the construction of rural roads has led to a loss of talents and capital in the western region, which harms the sustainable development of the population and resource system. This effect offsets the positive effect of the other three systems. This research has substantial policy implications for promoting rural revitalization and agricultural development.

Earthquakes have catastrophic effects on the affected population, especially in undeveloped countries or regions. Minimizing the impact and consequences of earthquakes involves many decisions and disaster relief operations that should be optimized. A critical disaster management problem is to construct shelters with reasonable capacity in the right locations, allocate evacuees, and provide relief materials to them within a reasonable period. This study proposes a bi-objective hierarchical model with two stages, namely, the temporary shelter stage and the short-term shelter stage. The proposed objectives at different stages are to minimize the evacuation time, maximize the suitability based on qualitative factors, and minimize the number of sites while considering the demand, capacity, utilization, and budget constraints. The performance evaluation of the emergency shelter was carried out by fuzzy-VIKOR, and the most ideal location of the shelter was determined through multiple standards. Emergency management organizations can benefit from the collective expertise of multiple decision-makers because the proposed method uses their knowledge to automate the location and allocation process of shelters. In the case of Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China, the results of using this hybrid approach provide the government with a range of options. This method can realize the trade-off between efficiency and cost in the emergency shelter location and material distribution, and realize reliable solutions in disaster emergencies.

Agricultural green total factor productivity (AGTFP) is an important indicator to reflect the sustainability level of agriculture. The AGTFP network reflects the spatial correlations of the AGTFP among regions; thus, exploring its network structure and influencing factors can provide targeted policy guidance to the coordinated development of the agriculture sector. This study builds an epsilon-based measurement data envelopment analysis (EBM-DEA) model to calculate 31 provincial AGTFPs in China from 2002 to 2020. Then, social network analysis (SNA) was utilized to explore the characteristics of the AGTFP network, and the quadratic assignment procedure (QAP) was applied to find its external influencing factors. We reached four central conclusions: (1) Overall, there was a gradual upward trend of AGTFP in China during 2002~2020, and the average value rose from 0.75 in 2002 to 0.90 in 2020, but there were some differences among regions. (2) There is a complex and stable network characteristic of AGTFP; the average network density is 0.3753, and the average network efficiency is 0.4714. Meanwhile, some eastern and central areas, such as Henan, Anhui, Hubei, Hebei, Jiangsu, etc., have relatively high centrality and are a bridge in the entire network. (3) The AGTFP network can be divided into eight blocks, including two net beneficial blocks (the central-eastern provinces with high centrality); two net spillover blocks, including the provinces located in the developed urban areas (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Jilin), the underdeveloped northwest regions (Ningxia, Qinghai, Xinjiang, and Tibet). The other areas are two-way spillover blocks. (4) Transportation development gap, technological progress gap, and the similarities of the agricultural industry structure are critical factors influencing the AGTFP network. Hence, improving the efficiency of the logistics and transportation industry, promoting technology transfer from developed areas to underdeveloped areas, and developing characteristic agriculture are all conducive to promoting the whole region’s AGTFP. Our research provides policy implications for sustainable agricultural development in China and other developing countries.

Under the background of global warming, it is of great significance to explore how to realize environmentally sustainable development. This paper takes China’s three major urban agglomerations as the research objects: Yangtze River Delta, Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei, and Pearl River Delta. Generally, we use carbon emission efficiency to represent the sustainable development of the environment. Then we use the city-level panel data of the three urban agglomerations from 2006 to 2019 to construct the slacks-based measure integrating data envelopment (SBM-DEA) model for calculating each city’s carbon dioxide emission efficiency. Finally, we construct the spatial difference-in-differences (SDID) model to explore the impact of high-speed rail construction on each urban agglomeration’s carbon dioxide emission efficiency and its internal mechanism. The findings are as follows: (1) On the whole, high-speed rail construction improves urban agglomerations’ carbon dioxide emission efficiency. Meanwhile, it has a positive spatial spillover effect on surrounding areas. (2) In terms of urban agglomerations, high-speed rail construction has significantly promoted carbon emission efficiency in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region. However, it has had negative external effects on the surrounding areas. (3) From the perspective of mechanism analysis, the construction of high-speed rail has promoted manufacturing agglomeration in the Pearl River Delta region and, at the same time, has had a negative impact on the local carbon dioxide emission efficiency. This study has strong policy implications for promoting the sustainable development of the three major urban agglomerations.

The high-quality development of enterprises is the micro-foundation of China’s economic growth model from “speed and scale” to “quality and efficiency,” in which China’s transportation infrastructure, especially the high-speed railways (HSRs), plays an indispensable role. We select the propensity score matching and difference in difference (PSM-DID) model as the identification strategy and empirically analyze the impact of the HSR on the high-quality development of enterprises based on empirical data of 1331 A-share listed companies in China. The results show that the HSR has a significant positive impact on the high-quality development of enterprises. This effect is more substantial for enterprises in the Pearl River Delta, the Triangle of Central China, and small and medium-sized cities. The HSR inhibited the high-quality development of enterprises in the mining, culture, sports, and entertainment industries in eastern and central China. The reason is the restriction of the ability to create social and environmental value and the influence of monopolistic competition. The HSR improves labor mobility, capital expansion, and knowledge spillovers, thereby promoting the high-quality development of enterprises. However, new infrastructure mainly improves the high-quality development of enterprises by promoting knowledge spillovers and technological innovation. This paper contributes to the modernization of China’s HSR network and provides essential insights for the HSR to achieve sustainable development goals.

The journal’s Editorial Office and Editorial Board are jointly issuing a resolution and update regarding the Academic Editor linked to this article