Employing Chinese customs data and the Peking University Digital Financial Inclusion Index of China, this paper studies the impact of China's digital finance development on the upgrading of export at the city level and further explores the heterogeneity across cities and the mechanisms through which digital finance influences export upgrading. Benchmark results suggest that digital inclusive finance can significantly promote the upgrading of export. The heterogeneity analysis shows that cities with a smaller size, lower wage, higher human capital level, and better location advantage experience greater facilitating effects of digital inclusive finance on promoting export upgrading. It suggests that, compared with ‘icing on the cake’, the digital inclusive finance plays a better role in ‘offering fuel in snowy weather’, whereas full exertion of the inclusiveness of digital finance requires higher human capital and location advantage. Further mechanism analysis shows that innovation effect and market effect are the main channels where digital inclusive finance promotes the upgrading of a city’s export.

In the face of increasingly severe climate change and its destructive effects, how to effectively reduce carbon dioxide emissions has become a challenging task. Developing a digital economy provides opportunities for countries to reduce pollution and carbon emissions and reach a goal of carbon neutrality. As an emerging trade form, digitizable product trade is of great significance to promoting economic growth and carbon emission reduction. This paper selects panel data for 94 countries from 2001 to 2019 and adopts the STIRPAT model to analyze the impact effect and impact mechanism of digitizable product trade on carbon emissions. Research results show that developing digitizable product trade will help countries reduce carbon emissions. The conclusion is robust by replacing the explained variable and core explanatory variable. The carbon emission reduction effect has heterogeneity due to differentiated national income levels and product categories. Mechanism analysis shows that digitizable product trade reduces carbon emissions through the technology effect. Our analysis indicates that countries developing digital trade and digital technology and actively responding to environmental issues have a greater chance of reduced carbon emissions.

Based on the panel data of 91 countries from 2009 to 2019, we apply difference-in-difference (DID) method and decoupling analysis to examine the effects on environmental quality and economic growth from a dual perspective. This study found that: (1) the Belt and Road Initiative improves the environmental quality of BRI countries. (2) The initiative has more significantly improved environment of the carbon peaking achieved countries, non-tropical regions rather than their counterparts; It has a beneficial effect in both landlocked and coastal countries. No matter the countries are industrialized or not, participating in China’s high-speed rail projects or not, their environments have been improved. But the improvement is more pronounced for industrialized countries and countries not involved in China’s high-speed rail projects. Meanwhile, the more complete citizens’ voice and accountability, and the higher financial expenses, the more significant improvement there is for them. (3) The initiative can improve environment through investment, employment structure and clean energy. (4) The initiative also significantly boosts the economic growth of BRI countries. Furthermore, decoupling relationship between Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth and carbon emission levels shows that the number of BRI countries in strong decoupling state gradually decreases in 2015–2017, while increasing in 2018–2019.

Based on the trade data of digitizable products exported by China to the 65 ‘Belt and Road’ countries from 1998 to 2018, this study adopts the extended trade gravity model to analyze the impact of ICT on the country's exports of these products. The empirical results show that ICT has a significant and positive effect on the development of trade of digitizable products and it also promotes China's exports by lowering trade costs and accelerating innovation. The paper provides new evidence on information and technology's impact and influential mechanisms with regard to new trade patterns.

Strengthening bilateral energy security cooperation is crucial in the process of fostering the sustainable growth of China and neighboring Asian nations. Using data chosen from China and 25 adjacent nations between 2010 and 2019, this article first assesses the level of energy security using the TOPSIS (Technique of Ranking Preference with Similarity to Ideal Solution) and GRA (Grey Relational Analysis) methodologies. Additionally, based on the level of energy security, this article analyzes the coupling degree of bilateral capacity structure and, in the end, suggests a theoretical model to assess the stability of bilateral energy security cooperation. The findings demonstrate that China and its neighboring countries share the energy trilemma, which is the inability of these nations to simultaneously achieve the needs of energy supply security, energy justice, and environmental sustainability. The report also makes the case that Thailand, Kazakhstan, and the Philippines all have theoretically stronger sustainability of bilateral energy security cooperation with China. This study also offers some recommendations for improving bilateral collaboration between China and its neighbors on energy security.