China is world renowned for its significant achievements in several fields. China’s economic growth has been prominent, with the country’s GDP ranking second globally. China’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows have been significant, with the country now known as the second largest economy in the world. FDI however does have some negative consequences on China’s environment. While attracting FDI promotes economic growth through industrial upgrading, the deleterious impacts of the latter on the environment cannot be ignored. The current study analyses the actual use of FDI and carbon emissions in China from 1997 to 2018. Quantitative analysis was employed to analyze the trends of FDI and carbon emissions in China as a whole and in the respective regions, namely the eastern, central and western regions. Regression analysis was then conducted to analyze the impact of FDI on carbon emissions in China on the national level and regional levels, i.e., in the eastern, central and western regions. The conclusion of this article is that FDI will play a positive role in China’s overall carbon emissions. The study has important implications for policy. We recommend that the corresponding investment policies need to be formulated according to the different levels of economic development among the regions.

Rapid urbanization and the gradual disappearance of urban and rural barriers have accelerated rural surplus labor migration. This study focused on the rural household’s livelihood from the perspective of farmland lease-out. Using 382 rural households’ data in Jiangxi Province, we used the seemingly unrelated regression and binary logistic models to analyze the impact of farmland lease-out on rural households’ livelihood capital and livelihood strategy. The results indicated that farmland lease-out did not affect rural households’ human capital but had a negative impact on social capital, natural capital and future life expectation, and had a positive impact on financial capital and physical capital. Farmland lease-out had a significant negative impact on agricultural pluriactivity-type livelihood strategies, while having a significant positive impact on off-farm employment livelihood strategies. In addition, the scale of farmland lease-out had a positive impact on the off-farm pluriactivity and off-farm employment livelihood strategies.