Based on a database of 200 listed firms from the Growth Enterprise Market of China, this paper employs regression models to investigate the significance of IPO capital expenditure to firms’ operating performance. It suggests that a vast majority of pre-IPO money is spent on business development to promote operating performance in order to meet IPO requirements. After the IPO, most of the money is transferred to equity investments in order to increase the firms’ market value quickly, which leads to operating performance decline and deterioration.

In the early stage of the COVID-19 outbreak, a vast majority of research predicted its potential economic impacts based on various possible scenarios, believing that looking forward earlier and recovering better. In contrast, through contrarian thinking from an economic recovery perspective, this study empirically investigates the direct impact of COVID-19 on China’s economy. This reveals that China’s economy experiences a V-shaped recovery; it is in the recovery process and will achieve the pre-pandemic level in the coming years. Consumption, international trade, and investment indicators are synchronously recovering, which may be attributed to the fact that the pandemic has had little impact on China’s economy, although it remarkably hits national consumption, international trade, and investment that are less interrupted. Empirical evidence shows that the pandemic is unlikely to alter China’s industrial structure, as it has primarily affected the service and manufacturing sectors while leaving agriculture relatively unaffected. In light of these findings, China’s economy is facing challenges beyond the pandemic. By adopting a recovery-oriented contrarian approach, we can better identify the dynamic consequences and optimize economic strategies to mitigate potential long-term impacts on sustainable economic growth. These insights may also help guide economic recovery efforts in other developing countries.

This study investigates the interactive mechanism among diversified production strategy, ESG performance, and long-term competitiveness using a sample of Chinese listed manufacturing firms over the period 2018–2024. Based on the Long-Term Strategic System Integration Model (LSSIM), agency theory, and the resource-based view, we construct a Diversification-Driven Sustainability (DDS) dual-loop model to examine the moderating roles of ESG and firm capabilities. The empirical results show that ESG positively moderates the relationship between diversified production and long-term competitiveness, with the governance dimension playing the dominant role. ESG also alleviates operational volatility and investment inefficiency induced by diversification. Furthermore, firm capabilities positively strengthen the impact of diversified production on ESG performance. Robustness tests including 1% winsorization, dynamic system GMM, and alternative core indicator measurements confirm the reliability of the conclusions. This study enriches the theoretical framework linking diversification and sustainable development, and provides targeted guidance for manufacturing firms, investors, and policymakers to promote high-quality transformation and upgrading.