In traditional Chinese culture, there exist some important categories that embody the experience of “weaving”. As cultural “memes”, they have been exerting a subtle influence on all aspects of social life and still hold significant value today. This deserves considerable attention in the study of Chinese scientific and technological culture. The most typical categories influenced by the experience of “weaving” are jing (warp) and wei (weft). Similar categories include zuzhi (organization), jiegou (structure), chuantong (tradition), and chixu (continuity), each of which is written with one or two characters containing the radical si (silk). The enduring influence of these categories has enhanced the integrity, resilience, and continuity of the development of traditional Chinese society, helped to strengthen cultural cohesion, and facilitated adaptation to change and innovation. However, the historical forms of these categories also contain certain limitations that call for reflection and sublation. In the intelligent era, the experience of “weaving” embedded in traditional Chinese culture demonstrates its unique intellectual value. It has great practical significance for reasonably addressing the immense challenges that advances in high technology pose to social structures, interpersonal relationships, and ways of thinking, and for promoting the formation and development of a community with a shared future for mankind.

The concept of “constitutive luck” mainly emphasizes the differences in innate tendencies, potentials, and temperaments, that is, the differences in natural endowments and capacities. In Confucianism, fate, nature, emotion and natural endowments actually contain constitutive luck, and these elements have a very significant influence or even a decisive role in people’s wealth, longevity, fame, and fortune. However, Confucianism strictly limits the scope of constitutive luck, excluding it from the moral domain. Confucianism holds that everyone possesses a benevolent heart and good nature, and innate moral tendencies, potentials, and temperaments; moreover, there are no significant difference among people as for as benevolence and goodness is concerned. Therefore, the moral differences among people are related to later acquired actions and deeds rather than innate constitutive luck or natural endowments. In Confucianism, people are responsible for morality, because morality constitutes the essential human nature. This not only means that people should expand their benevolence and goodness and cultivate themselves into morally noble individuals, but also implies taking responsibility for others. In other words, one should attain both self-cultivation and the cultivation of others. If people fail to fulfill their responsibilities or attain self-cultivation and the cultivation of others, they can blame only themselves, not constitutive luck.

A fundamental question in the study of the history of ideas is: What is an “idea”? One way to answer this question is to undertake a historical semantic examination of “idea” (ἰδέα, idea, idée, Idee, etc.) as a core term in Western philosophy. Generally speaking, the semantic evolution of “idea” exhibits a descent from the universal to the particular, and from transcendent reality to human psychology, with episodes of expansion, contraction, transformation, splitting and return interwoven along the way. Four main threads can be distinguished in this process: ideas as psychological representation, ideas as components of a worldview, ideas as shared action-guiding knowledge, and ideas as social materiality. Historical semantics can clarify the historical question of “what the concept of ‘idea’ once meant”, while the normative question of “what the concept of ‘idea’ should mean” awaits the development of a “philosophy of the history of ideas”.

“Establishing first, breaking later” serves as the pivotal methodological principle for further comprehensive deepening of reform. A historical review reveals that the Chinese Communists, with a profound understanding of the social and historical realities in different historical stages, have successively put forward the methodological principles of “breaking first, establishing later” and “establishing first, breaking later”. In essence, these two principles constitute concrete manifestations of the methodological approach that drives the supersession of old things by new ones. They are fundamentally shaped by the essential features of old and new things, their interactive relationship, and the systemic impacts of the replacement process. Faced with the practical requirements of both continuing reforms to respond to the development needs of the times and consolidating the achievements of reform and development as well as maintaining social stability, the only way for further comprehensively deepening reform is to drive the supersession of old things by new ones through the principle of “establishing first, breaking later” so as to advance Chinese modernization. This requires that, in the practice of further comprehensively deepening reform, we should enhance timeliness to respond to realistic demands, improve adaptability to consolidate the quality foundation, strengthen dynamism to advance the enactment, revision, abolition and interpretation of institutions, and boost systematicness to coordinate the rhythm of breaking and establishing. By doing so, we can ensure the steady and sound advancement of further comprehensive deepening of reform advances, thereby providing solid support for Chinese modernization.

“China’s self-developed knowledge system” means that “China” functions as an analytical concept, forming a rich discourse across dimensions such as the consciousness structure of “the past, the present, the Chinese and the Western”, institutional concepts, methodological refinement, and theorization. To what extent the “China” discourse of political scientists in Republican China demonstrates the analytical capacity of the concept of “China” constitutes an important aspect of evaluating the knowledge content of political science in Republican China. Qian Duansheng made significant contributions in four research areas: the party-state, government and politics, administrative efficiency, and state political institutions. He possessed a clear consciousness structure of “the past, the present, the Chinese and the Western”, and pioneered two institutional concepts: the party-state and the political system combining a strong state with respect for civil rights. However, constrained by the limitations of national practical experience and the development of foreign theories, his research still exhibited certain shortcomings in conceptualization and theorization. It failed to fully transform “China” into an analytical concept, which affected the theoretical depth and professional rigor of his scholarship.

Political science education in modern universities in Shanghai first took shape during the late Qing period. It gradually evolved from independent courses and academic programs into formal departments. By the early 1930s, as many as 11 universities in Shanghai had established political science departments. Given the diverse nature of higher education institutions in Shanghai, these departments differed in faculty composition and curriculum emphasis, thereby forming a pluralistic academic landscape. Some focused on the teaching and research of international relations to serve the government; some adopted liberal political theories to criticize the Kuomintang regime; others took advantage of political science departments to secretly spread Marxism. Subsequently, the Kuomintang government restricted the development of political science departments at the educational level, while recruiting scholars into political service and excluding professors who advocated liberalism and Marxist political theories at the political level. Thereafter, the political science departments in Shanghai generally turned toward historicization, abandoning substantive political inquiry and losing touch with political reality. The seeds of the discipline’s decline were thus sown from within.

Regarding the authorship of Liu Zi, four candidates have been proposed in academic circles: Liu Xin, Liu Xiaobiao, Liu Xie, and Liu Zhou. This article ascertains that Liu Zhou was born in the fourth year of the Yanchang era (515 CE) in the reign of Emperor Xuanwu of the Northern Wei Dynasty and died in the second year of the Tiantong era (566 CE) in the reign of the Latter Ruler Gao Wei of the Northern Qi Dynasty. His career was fraught with adversity and his talents were never fully recognized. The classification of the “Nine Schools” in Liu Zi draws upon the “Yiwen Zhi” (Catalogue of Arts and Literature) in the Book of Han, rather than the “Jingji Zhi” (Catalogue of Classics and Texts) in the Book of Sui, as claimed by the compilers of Complete Library of the Four Treasuries. Its core philosophy rests on the mutual complementation of Confucianism and Daoism and the synthesis of the teachings of the Hundred Schools of Thought, containing a wealth of life experience. Liu Zi is likely a compilation of works by Liu Zhou, such as Di Dao and Jinxiang Biyan. Initially lacking a fixed title, it was generally referred to as Liu Zi. Through an examination of the background in which the text was compiled, its intellectual sources, Liu Zhou’s life story and the textual history and transmission of surviving editions, this paper argues that it is most reasonable to attribute Liu Zi to Liu Zhou.

Research on novel criticism from the perspective of “material culture” encompasses three dimensions: printing technology, printing institutions, and dissemination and reception. Printing technology shapes the material presentation of novel criticism at a technical level, including layout, illustrations, and color block printing. Printing institutions, including publishing houses, printing bureaus, and newspaper offices, serve as the carriers and practitioners of these technologies. Their application and promotion enabled the large-scale printing and replication of novel criticism, imbuing it with a strong commercial character. Dissemination and reception focus on the process in which novel criticism, as a “cultural commodity”, enters the circulation field, with price, distribution channels, and media being the most critical factors. Integrating “material culture” into the study of novel criticism provides a valuable supplement to previous research paradigms that predominantly emphasized literary criticism.

“Genre Overlapping with the Shuobu (fictional and anecdotal writings)” constitutes one of the five subcategories of “literary criticism” in General Catalogue of the Four Treasuries. Represented by the works such as Six One Poetic Discourses and Central Mountain Poetic Discourses, its historical formation involved three key stages. It was initiated in Ouyang Xiu’s Six One Poetic Discourses in the Song Dynasty. Deliberately under the guise of “leisure chat”, Ouyang Xiu created this representative work integrating the form of fiction, the talent of a good historian and the words of a literary writer. It was developed in the Ming Dynasty. Wang Shizhen, with the cultural and factional stance in Wuzhong, united a group to demonstrate their cultural capital and academic individuality in the competition for literary authority, and included Miscellaneous Notes on the Arts in the Shuobu in his own collection of works. Finally, it was established in the Qing Dynasty. Some of the fictional works in the original version of General Catalogue were reclassified in “literary criticism” in the last version of General Catalogue. Emperor Qianlong and his minister Ji Yun affirmed the academic value of the Shuobu, and “genre overlapping with the Shuobu” was thus established. These three stages, which are respectively characterized by individual creation, group operation, and official establishment, demonstrate that the “genre overlapping with the Shuobu” is a poetic paradigm that was rationally designed and historically selected. Possessing legitimacy, effectiveness and daily relevance, this genre is worthy of exchange and mutual learning with the mainstream paradigms of systematic theories in Western poetics.

Starting from the cross-cultural stance of being “a child of all nations” without rejecting human experiences and social thought beyond the Chinese intellectual world, this paper takes the indigenous concepts xiu/xiuxing (self-cultivation/cultivation practice) as an analytic lever to outline a practice-centered pathway for Chinese anthropology. In this pathway, Chinese concepts are neither the endpoint of theory nor mere cultural markers; rather, they function as provisional bridges linking experience and theory, the local and the universal. What the concepts xiu/xiuxing disclose is not an “essentially Eastern” spirit, but a shared human condition of shaping the self through practice over time. Its value lies in the processual practice of “wiping/cleansing, ordering/rectifying, regulating/attuning, and disciplined exercise”, through which the relations among subject formation, bodily techniques, ethical training, and forms of life are reconnected, thereby bringing human becoming into an analytic field that can be tested and compared. From this vantage point, what Chinese anthropology seeks is not to replace Western concepts with Chinese ones, but to explore, through close engagement with indigenous concepts and sustained methodological reflection, a theoretical pathway capable of moving back and forth across cultural experiences, entering into dialogue, and continuously generating new understandings.

Lin Yaohua’s early research is characterized by the integration and mutual enlightenment of classics, history and other literature (traditional Chinese studies) on the one hand and fieldwork (anthropology) on the other. Following Lin, Zhuang Kongshao coined his indigenous concept guohua (diffusive moral permeation) based on Confucianism. Starting from the research cases of these two scholars, this paper analyzes their indigenous concepts such as guohua and jingquan (principles and expediencies), and examines their endeavors in the sinicization of anthropology. Both Lin and Kong strove to draw on indigenous resources to interpret the reality of Chinese society and culture, and to construct a universal understanding of human beings from the perspective of anthropology. These research practices can also be regarded as important explorations that align with the foundation of Chinese anthropology.

Since the so-called “Kuige” period the 1940s, Gu Bao (1916–2012) accomplished three classic field research cases in his academic career: Huacheng Village in Chenggong, Yunnan, Zhuoni Tibetan Area in southern Gansu, and rural societies in southern Xinjiang. Covering different regions and ethnic groups, these studies are fundamentally significant in uncovering traditional local organizations. Explicitly or implicitly, Gu Bao revealed that the formation of grassroots communities is closely related to core anthropological themes, including land institutions and property rights. Notably, the acquisition of community membership based on human–land relations renders these cases comparable. Furthermore, his description and analysis of “common land” reflected both the diversity and coherence of understandings of “the common” from an indigenous perspective. Comparing these cases through textual analysis, academic contextualization and re-study can not only present China’s social and cultural landscapes in a more holistic way, but also promote indigenous theoretical innovation in anthropology beyond regional and ethnic boundaries.

Building the “new development pattern” with domestic circulation as the mainstay and the mutual reinforcement of the domestic and international dual circulations is a major strategic decision in China’s new development stage. The historical logic of the economic evolution of China, the practical logic and the strategic choice based on the new development stage, and the theoretical logic based on the “two overall situations” together form the logical mechanism for a profound political-economic interpretation of the new development pattern. The key points in building the new development pattern lie in unblocking the key links of the national economic circulation and establishing the intrinsic mechanisms of their interactions. To establish the dominant position of the domestic circular economy, the key lies in further advancing the construction of a unified domestic market and enhancing the resilience of the industrial chain and supply chain. High-level opening-up is an important means to promote the mutual reinforcement of the domestic and international dual circulations, in order to achieve mutual benefits, win-win results, and security and order in an open world. The interconnection and mutual reinforcement of the domestic and international markets generate linkages in demand, innovation and regional development. At present, further deepening comprehensive reform and advancing high-standard institutional opening-up have become central to the mutual reinforcement of the domestic and international dual circulations.

Based on the data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) from 2014 to 2022, combined with other micro-data, this paper examines the differential effects of housing debt on the employment choices of males and females from the perspective of gender division of labor. The main findings are as follows: (1) Housing debt significantly increases female labor force participation, whereas it exerts no statistically significant effect on male labor force participation. Drawing on the gender division of labor theory, men, who are traditionally regarded as the primary breadwinners, tend to maintain stable engagement in the labor market. In contrast, women, who typically bear the primary responsibility for family caregiving, are more likely to enter or re-enter the labor force in response to the financial pressures associated with housing debt. (2) The positive effect of housing debt on labor force participation is most pronounced among married women, particularly those with access to intergenerational caregiving support. (3) Housing debt drives women to opt for flexible employment arrangements, such as self-employment and part-time work, in order to better balance work and family obligations, while men remain unaffected by such financial pressures in this regard. (4) Housing debt significantly increases work intensity among men, whereas women’s work intensity remains relatively stable; this discrepancy is primarily attributed to the constraints imposed by women’s caregiving responsibilities within the household. The research findings provide policy implications for advancing high-quality and full employment, refining real estate market regulation, and guiding households to maintain rational debt levels.

Against the backdrop of the continuous deepening of the Yangtze River Delta integration process and the widespread concern over housing market fluctuations, this paper empirically analyzes the correlation of housing demand in four major cities, that is, Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, and Suzhou, over the period from 2015 to 2025. It takes the floor space of housing sales as a proxy variable for housing demand and uses time-varying Granger causality tests and the TVP-VAR-DY model. The results reveal a ripple effect in the fluctuations of housing demand among the four cities, with a relatively high degree of overall correlation that declined in the second half of 2023. From a temporal perspective, before and during the second half of 2023, housing demand fluctuations in Shanghai more frequently led those in other cities, whereas after the second half of 2023, they more frequently lagged behind. Regarding spillover effects, Shanghai primarily acts as a receiver of housing demand fluctuations, while Nanjing mainly serves as a transmitter. These findings demonstrate the time-varying nature of the correlation of housing demand within the Yangtze River Delta, thereby offering insights for the coordinated governance of regional housing markets.