Since 2016, 15 pilot cities in China have implemented a long-term care insurance (LTCI) policy. The aim of this research was to explore the outcomes and evaluate the performance of the LTCI policy in the Chinese pilot cities and estimate the willingness of Chinese citizens to expand the formal implementation of LTCI policy in China. We gathered data from 1500 elderly people aged over 60 years in 15 pilot cities (100 surveys for each city) and the effective response rate was 77.8% (1167/1500). We relied on statistical analysis to elicit the outcomes and performance of LTCI implementation and an ordinal logit regression to analyze the factors associated with the extension of the LTCI policy. We examined factors associated with the perception according to sex, age, degree of disability, choices of care, living location, number of children, and monthly income. Among these factors, the relationship between living location and number of children of the family and the outcomes and performance of the LTCI policy in the pilot cities was significant. The rest of the factors showed no significance with the implementation of the LTCI in Chinese pilot cities. This study is among the first to explore the attitudes of Chinese citizens among those who have benefited from the LTCI policy in the pilot cities and contributes to identifying the outcomes of the LTCI in pilot cities to assist policymakers in their further implementation in China.

The Seventh National Population Census, recently conducted in 2020, reported the most up-to-date information on the size, structure, and distribution of China’s population. The results showed that the gender imbalance in China is still severe compared with the international standard. With the aim of understanding what has contributed to China’s gender imbalance, this study examined a range of potential influencing factors and measured the extent to which they have affected China’s sex structure. We gathered data from 3100 citizens (100 surveys from each provincial-level administrative region in mainland China); the useful response rate was 87.5% (2713/3100). We relied on statistical analysis to investigate the phenomenon of male preference in China and used a logit regression to analyze the factors associated with this result. We inspected the factors associated with the perception according to gender, age, annual income, living location, educational level, nationality, family contribution, the ideology of being supported by sons, social status, ability to generate money, and carrying on the family name. The results showed that, among these factors, the relationship of family contribution, the ideology of being supported by sons, and carrying on the family name with male preference was significant. This study is among the first to explore the factors affecting male preference that could have resulted in China’s gender imbalance. The findings of this research are also important as references for the development of the population strategy and policy instruments used to manage the demographic problems in China.

This study analyses the effect of air pollution on the settlement intention of migrants in China. In recent years, the willingness of residents to migrate induced by air pollution has received a lot of attention from academics. By matching information from the China Migrants Dynamic Survey from 2015 to 2017 with the air quality index (AQI), we used the Probit model to assess the impact of air pollution on the settlement intentions of migrants with different socioeconomic statuses. First, we demonstrated that air pollution has a significant negative effect on migrants’ settlement intention. Second, we found that the effect of air pollution on settlement intention is influenced by individual socioeconomic status; that education level, as an indicator of cognitive ability, affects migrants’ motivation to migrate; and that personal income, as an indicator of economic ability, affects the feasibility of their migration. Motivation to migrate and the feasibility of moving determine together the divergence in settlement intention, and those with higher incomes and higher education levels are more likely to leave cities with serious air pollution. Third, the heterogeneous effects suggested that the negative effect of air pollution was greater for older, male, and married migrants. Our findings suggested that air pollution has a variety of effects on the heterogeneous migrants, resulting in changes in the demographic structure of cities.

This paper investigated the use of the One Belt One Road initiative (BRI) as a policy model that might address the insufficiencies of the traditional development aid model in reconstructing and developing Afghanistan. Afghanistan has emerged as one of the world’s most fragile and conflict-affected countries, and it has gained the attention of both academic and political communities since the early 2000s. The materials for this article are based partly on a thorough analysis of the available documentation. The authors also conducted interviews with high-ranking political elites and policy officials in the Afghan government and international organizations. The study employed a purposive sampling method to identify people with firsthand information on how to sustain economic development in Afghanistan. This paper provides new insights by comparing the traditional development aid model and the BRI in terms of social economy, local security and regional economic development. The aim of this research is to evaluate whether the BRI can remedy the insufficiencies of the traditional development aid model in order to sustain development in Afghanistan. The findings provide a better understanding of the BRI in promoting the internal dynamism required to develop the regional economy, and fill a gap in the literature with regard to the applied and theoretical economic growth models for stabilizing and sustaining the development of fragile and conflict-affected states.

The major global economies are facing increasing pressure to reduce their carbon emissions. Introducing environmental policy instruments to stimulate green innovation is key to mitigating global warming. We propose a carbon tax design with a typical green innovation orientation that links carbon taxes with the low-carbon technology (LCT) of enterprises and imposes a progressive tax on heterogeneous enterprises with LCT stock to encourage green innovation. This study used a dynamic evolution game model based on the Stackelberg model of heterogeneous enterprises with LCT stock to analyze the green-innovation-inducing effect of unit progressive carbon taxes. A unit progressive carbon tax could encourage enterprises to participate in green innovation, regardless of their initial green innovation willingness. The progressive tax rate was more effective than a fixed rate for stimulating green innovation by all enterprises. There was a marginal diminishing effect of increases in the tax rate. An increase in the innovation cost coefficient of enterprises reduced the green-innovation-inducing effect of the unit progressive carbon tax. Increasing the tax rate was effective only under normal circumstances. A decline in the carbon reduction in enterprises also reduced the green-innovation-inducing effect of the unit progressive carbon tax. Furthermore, increasing the tax rate when the carbon reduction amount was extremely low caused enterprises to abandon green innovation.

This paper explores the role of policy transfer in establishing long-term care insurance in China. The study shows that the knowledge gained from Germany serves as a new policy instrument in the provision of care to the elderly and disabled in China. We build on the theory of Dolowitz and Marsh and the framework of Evans to examine the initiation process for long-term care insurance, which is arguably broadly indicative of the dynamics of change underpinning the incremental process of policy transfer. It is observed that the current knowledge on policy transfer is characterized by evidence-based policy-making. This research implements policy transfer as tool for policy innovation and changes that promotes the performance of China’s social security sector. The establishment of long-term care insurance in China can best be described as rational policy design.