Under the robust impetus of China’s rural revitalization strategy, agro-tourism integration and tourism-driven poverty reduction have profoundly impacted various aspects of China’s economy, society, and ecology. This has propelled coordinated urban–rural development and the sustainable development of the tourism industry. This study introduces an analytical framework encompassing tourism-driven poverty reduction, agro-tourism integration, and rural revitalization. Through PVAR and threshold models, it empirically examines the interactive effects, dynamic relationships, and threshold effects between agro-tourism integration, tourism-driven poverty reduction, and rural revitalization. The conclusions are as follows: Firstly, the indices of rural revitalization and the level of agro-tourism integration show an increasing trend across Chinese provinces, with varying trends in tourism-driven poverty reduction efficiency. Secondly, there is a significant dynamic relationship among these factors, with the explanatory power of tourism-driven poverty reduction and agro-tourism integration gradually strengthening. Agro-tourism integration is identified as the most effective means of driving rural revitalization, while tourism-driven poverty reduction has a relatively weaker direct impact. Thirdly, tourism-driven poverty reduction exhibits a positive impulse response to agro-tourism integration. The improvement in tourism-driven poverty reduction efficiency propels further development in agro-tourism integration, thereby fostering rural revitalization. The efficiency of tourism-driven poverty reduction presents a single threshold effect in the process of agro-tourism integration promoting rural revitalization. Fourthly, the development of China’s tourism industry has become an indispensable means of promoting rural revitalization and poverty reduction. However, rural revitalization is a comprehensive project influenced by various factors, requiring improvements and development across multiple aspects.

Since economic globalization is unstable, it is difficult for the traditional open economic development model to meet the requirements of China’s development, and there is an urgent need for new ideas and models to be reoriented. Based on the analysis of the development mechanism of China’s open economy at this stage, we used the entropy method, Theil coefficient, Gini coefficient, and spatial Durbin model (SDM) to analyze the spatio-temporal pattern and influencing factors of the high-quality development level of the open economy in the Yangtze River Delta Area (YRDA). The results indicated that during the study period, the development level and development difference of open economy were on the rise, and the spatial difference in different regions was significant. The development of open economy was affected by many factors, and there was a spatial spillover effect. Based on the existing problems, at the stage of high-quality economic development, the YDRA should seize the opportunities brought by the new development pattern, improve government services, optimize innovation drive, and promote the development of open economy to a higher level. We believe that the results of this study can also provide relevant experience for the development of open economy in other regions of China.

Based on panel data from 102 resource-based cities in China spanning 2013 to 2023, this study employs fixed effects and mediating effect models to empirically examine the impact of urban renewal on eco-environmental resilience. The main findings are as follows. First, urban renewal development significantly enhances eco-environmental resilience, and this conclusion remains robust after various robustness checks. Second, heterogeneity analysis reveals that the impact exhibits a distinctive regional pattern: “the central region shows the strongest promotion effect, the eastern region shows a relatively weaker promotion effect, and the western region exhibits a pronounced inhibitory effect.” Furthermore, the promoting effect is more pronounced in regions with lower energy consumption pressure, higher environmental governance investment, and larger city sizes. Third, urban renewal can enhance eco-environmental resilience through two pathways: promoting industrial structure optimization and upgrading, and strengthening environmental regulation. Fourth, the urbanization level plays a significant moderating role in the process by which urban renewal enhances the eco-environmental resilience of resource-based cities.

China’s resource-based cities are undergoing a dual transition in which industrial restructuring reshapes the economic foundations of urban development, while urban functional renewal, in turn, conditions the capacity and trajectory of industrial transformation. Based on panel data for 102 resource-based cities from 2013 to 2023, this study constructs a dual-system framework of urban functional upgrading and industrial transformation. The entropy method, coupling coordination degree model, spatial autocorrelation analysis, and spatial Durbin model are used to measure synergistic evolution, identify spatiotemporal patterns, and examine driving factors and spatial spillovers. The results show that both systems improved during the study period, but their evolutionary rhythms were not fully synchronized. The level of synergistic evolution increased steadily, although most cities remained at a relatively low coordination stage, with higher values in central areas and lower values in peripheral areas. Significant spatial dependence is observed for urban functional upgrading, industrial transformation, and their synergistic evolution. The spatial econometric results indicate that environmental-regulation attention, population density, human capital, digital infrastructure, and social consumption capacity play differentiated roles, with social consumption capacity showing the most stable positive association. Robustness tests confirm the reliability of the main findings. This study provides empirical evidence for differentiated governance and coordinated transformation in resource-based cities.