Although food security has been a long-standing focus of research and policy in China, significant gaps remain in synthesizing evolving debates across multiple disciplines such as agriculture, economics, environmental science, and politics. This systematic review provides an interdisciplinary analysis of five key areas shaping contemporary discourses on Chinese food security: (1) balancing self-sufficiency with trade dependence; (2) reconciling agricultural intensification with environmental sustainability; (3) addressing urbanization’s impact on small-scale agriculture transformation; (4) enhancing resilience to climate change through targeted investments and policies; and (5) improving food safety standards to meet growing consumer concerns. This review harnesses insights from global academic databases—including Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar—to map interdisciplinary debates on Chinese food security, synthesizing peer-reviewed studies and policy reports from 2010 to 2024. Drawing upon empirical evidence from recent studies, this review highlights critical tensions, such as those between economic growth priorities and ecological preservation, and explores pathways for sustainable development within China’s unique socio-political context. The findings underscore that robust food security strategies must integrate diverse perspectives while adapting to emerging challenges such as climate change impacts and shifting consumer demands. To ensure sustainable outcomes, future policies should prioritize inclusivity by incorporating insights from ongoing research agendas across disciplines. This review can be used as a benchmark for the advancement of research agendas focused on developing sustainable solutions to the complex challenges of food security in China and beyond.

The study provides thresholds of income inequality that if exceeded will nullify the positive effect of governance dynamics on gender-inclusive education in 42 countries in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 2004–2014. The Generalised Method of Moments is used as an estimation strategy. The following findings are established. First, the unconditional effects of governance dynamics on inclusive education are consistently positive whereas the corresponding conditional effects from the interaction between inequality and governance dynamics are consistently negative. Second, the levels of inequality that completely crowd-out the positive incidence of governance on inclusive ‘primary and secondary education’ are: 0.587 for the rule of law and 0.565 for corruption-control. Third, the levels of inequality that completely dampen the positive incidence of governance on inclusive ‘secondary education’ are: 0.601 for ‘voice & accountability’ and 0.700 for regulation quality. Fourth, for tertiary education, inequality thresholds are respectively 0.568 for political stability and 0.562 for corruption-control. The main policy implication is that for governance dynamics to promote inclusive education in the sampled countries, income inequality levels should be kept within the established thresholds. Other implications are discussed in the light of Sustainable Development Goals.

Sustainable development is the global overarching paradigm and essential for achieving economic, social, and environmental development. The primary goal of this study is to compare the efficiency of sustainable development and evaluate its influencing factors across the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and G7 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and United States) countries by examining total factor productivity, efficiency change, and technological change. For this, we adopted the super-efficiency SBM-DEA model with undesirable output and Global Malmquist-Luenberger (GML) productivity index model to overcome inaccurate efficiency results while avoiding environmentally unwanted outputs and to resolve the shortcomings of the conventional Malmquist-Luenberger index. It is also necessary to explore relevant influencing factors on the environmental pollution thereby affects the sustainable development efficiency of the study countries, thus, this study employed STIRPAT approach. A panel data of BRICS and G7 countries from 2005 to 2015 is used. The findings reveal that sustainable total factor productivity (GML) in China (1.0165), the US (1.0150), and UK (1.0024) is on the rise. China is also one of the countries that experienced the highest positive efficiency change (GMLEC) (1.0147) and the US has the highest positive technical change (GMLTC) (1.0103). Contrarily, Russia experienced the highest decline in GMLTC (0.9316) as well as GML indexes (0.9337), whereas South Africa experienced the highest decline in GMLEC (0.9707). Additionally, GDP per capita (.0969) and population (.4178) have a positive influence on CO2 emissions in the BRICS countries, whereas in the G7 nations, GDP per capita (−.2180) and population (−.1249) have negative influences on CO2 emissions. The study also offers practical recommendations to address identified limitations and improve sustainable productivity and environmental efficiency. The inverse link between GDP and CO2 emissions might imply that the G7 nations have passed the turning point on an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC), but this finding does not support the EKC hypothesis in the BRICS nations.

This paper examines whether the claims regarding the nature of the Sino-African relations can be qualified or categorised as a neo-colonialism approach. Additionally, the paper analyses the Western perception and implication towards the Sino-African geopolitical cooperation and clarifies whether China is taking advantage of the weak African states in the name of South–South cooperation or playing the role of a contemporary proxy of the old colonial system and re-partitioning Africa. The relation between China and Africa simultaneously presents both challenges and opportunities for either of them. This study argues that the criticism that China is invading the continent and practicing neo-colonialism is just a speculation or Sino-phobia. In fact, the Chinese have no gene in their blood to invade Africa and it is crystal clear that unlike China, the Western world has had an influential history in the African continent. The African government and their societies have the ability to address the issues of Sino-African relations. This paper additionally provides a theoretical analysis of China’s enthusiastic involvement and contribution to the international aid operations and its presence and contribution in Africa.