Cotton is an important agricultural crop and strategic resource. China is currently the country with the largest global cotton production and consumption, but few studies have systematically analyzed the dynamic relationship between factor price change (FPC) and cotton production pattern evolution (CPPE). Based on provincial panel data from the main cotton planting areas from 1985 to 2021, this paper used spatial econometric models to empirically analyze the impact of FPC including labor price, production material cost, and mechanical cost on CPPE from the perspective of mechanical substitution difficulty. The findings are that (1) FPC significantly affected CPPE, specifically the rise of labor price induced the demand for mechanical substitution, resulting in a significant cotton agglomeration effect; (2) spatial econometric analysis found that FPC had a significant spatial spillover effect on CPPE in adjacent regions; and (3) the transfer analysis found that higher mechanical substitution difficulty exerted an inhibitory effect on cotton planting, leading to a gradual shift of the main cotton planting areas from the Yangtze River Basin and Yellow River Basin with high labor prices to the Northwest Inland region with lower labor prices. Updating the production technology and improving the efficiency of cotton specialization are effective strategies. The results are valuable for policy making related to the development of China’s cotton industry.

The rapid spread of the internet in rural China in the 21st century has fundamentally reshaped the operation of the Chinese rural political system in ways that are at least as profound as television half a century ago. This study used the data of 8754 farmers from 2018 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) in China to examine and provide empirical evidence on how internet use affects farmers’ trust in local government via a chain-mediation model. The results indicate that internet use erodes farmers’ trust in local government. Internet use is more likely to cause young and highly educated farmers to lose trust in local government. Both views on people’s livelihood problems and government performance evaluations play mediating roles between internet use and farmers’ trust in local government. Further, we also found that the negative direct impact of internet use on farmers’ trust in local government is also serial mediated by views on people’s livelihood problems and government performance evaluations. The results expand the research on the factors influencing trust in government.

The agricultural machinery operation services (AMOS) market and the farmland transfer market are regarded by policymakers as complementary goals for promoting agricultural development in China. Nonetheless, the farmland transfer market in China is confronted with the threat of sustainable development. The relationship between AMOS and farmland transfer is not always complementary. To analyze the relationship between the AMOS market and the sustainability of the farmland transfer market, methods such as conditional mixed process, the Heckman two-step method, and the Sobel test were employed to explore the influence of AMOS on farmland transfer and its underlying mechanisms. The empirical results show the following: (i) AMOS inhibits farmland transfer-out but promotes farmland transfer-in, which will intensify the market competition of farmland transfer. This result remains valid after correcting for the potential endogenous bias and selective bias and is consistent across different variables and samples. This conclusion suggests that AMOS has emerged as a factor restricting the sustainable development of the farmland transfer market in China. (ii) The heterogeneity analysis results indicate that AMOS has a greater inhibitory effect on the farmland transfer-out of small-scale farmers, part-time farmers, and elderly farmers, and a greater incentive effect on the farmland transfer-in of large-scale farmers, professional farmers, and non-elderly farmers. (iii) Labor allocation and agricultural capital allocation are the potential mechanisms for AMOS to affect farmland transfer. AMOS indirectly inhibits farmland transfer-out and promotes farmland transfer-in by farmland operation ability of labor force and benefits of farmland operation. These results imply that there is a complementary relationship and substitution relationship between the AMOS market and the farmland transfer market. The substitution relationship may sometimes frustrate policies aimed at stimulating the farmland transfer market. The Chinese government is required to be wary of the potential menace that AMOS brings to the sustainability of China’s farmland transfer market.

New energy vehicles (NEVs) offer a sustainable private transportation alternative. Charging points are the source of power for NEVs; thus, their construction can significantly lower the costs associated with their use, thereby encouraging their adoption. This could potentially impact the subway demand, which is reflected by the relationship between housing prices and subway proximity in this paper, leading to a decrease in the premium for properties near subway stations. Utilizing a comprehensive data set of 599,916 housing transactions in Beijing and a difference-in-differences approach based on the hedonic price model, we found that China’s NEV charging point subsidy policy significantly decreases the subway premium of housing prices and mitigates housing price disparities. Furthermore, we explored the spatial heterogeneity of this impact, finding that the policy has less influence on residents living near the city center. Our findings indicate that the policy has resulted in a considerable decrease in the subway premium, ranging from ¥19,217 to ¥55,936 ($2745 to $7991) per transaction, which is equivalent to the annual income for an average individual at the time of the policy. The results address the far-reaching implications and significant role of NEV development in urban transportation.

The agricultural machinery service (AMS) market enables China to rapidly realize agricultural mechanization on the basis of smallholder farmers. Academics generally believe that China has created a model of agricultural mechanization that matches small-scale farmers with large-scale machinery. However, in recent years, the transformation of the AMS market from prosperity to decline has been under-analyzed. This paper used farm and AMS supplier survey data from the North China Plain to estimate the links between acquaintance transactions, segmentation of the AMS market and losses in terms of transaction efficiency. We found that although the AMS from acquaintances is more expensive and less efficient than from non-acquaintances, farmers still buy from acquaintances because this reduces the transaction costs of the AMS. However, acquaintance transactions have led to the segmentation of the AMS market, reducing the transaction efficiency of the AMS. The AMS market has gradually changed from open to closed in China. The Chinese government should determine how to adjust policies to promote the sustainable development of the AMS market.