Against the backdrop of intensifying global competition over critical minerals and the continued securitization of resource security, the U.S. mechanism for safeguarding the security of its overseas critical minerals has increasingly evolved into a comprehensive system structurally underpinned by military institutions. The United States remained highly dependent on imports for critical minerals, and its supply chains were thus highly vulnerable, making the indirect safeguarding role of U.S. military power particularly critical. The U.S. unified combatant command system provided support for the security of overseas critical minerals and broader overseas interests. Geographic combatant commands advanced security cooperation by shaping the regional security environment and ensuring the security of sea lanes. Functional combatant commands, by providing essential capabilities such as global logistics, cyber communications, and space-based navigation, constituted the infrastructural foundation necessary for the stable operation of modern critical mineral supply chains. The U.S. Strategic Command, meanwhile, provided the ultimate security backstop for national industrial continuity and resource security by maintaining strategic deterrence. The relationship between the U.S. combatant command system and overseas critical mineral security was therefore essentially conditional rather than instrumental in nature, and its institutional logic was characterized by indirectness,systemicity, and preventiveness.

As the development of near-Earth space resources is undergoing a paradigm shift from scientific exploration to large-scale industrialization, the commercial space sector has emerged as a core engine reshaping the global techno- economic landscape and the strategic competition boundaries among major countries. This paper centered on the techno- economic characteristics of commercial space development and proposed a policy-technology-industry Triple Helix framework for comparative analysis. On this basis, the paper analyzed the Triple Helix structures of commercial space development in China and the United States, and then compared their development models. Furthermore, focusing on the United States, the paper innovatively employed Large Language Models(LLMs) through Alibaba Cloud Model Studio(Bailian) to conduct a deep semantic analysis of more than two decades of U.S. commercial space policy. The paper proposed policy recommendations aiming to provide solid theoretical foundation and strategic reference for China to accelerate the construction of an internationally competitive techno-economic system for commercial space.

The contradiction between forestry and agriculture has persisted for decades in the eastern part of Inner Mongolia and even across the country. The Third National Land Survey reclassified some original forest land as cultivated land, which was subsequently designated as part of the cultivated land protection redline in the national spatial planning. Document No. 53 clarified that such forest land shall be managed as cultivated land in accordance with the principle of “ what is seen is what is obtained” , thereby intensifying the contradiction between forestry and agriculture. The national spatial planning shall serve as the ultimate basis for determining the nature of land types. In the event of a conflict between the cultivated land protection redline and the legal interests of forest land, the legal interests of cultivated land shall take precedence. Farmers engaged in cultivation within the cultivated land protection redline shall be exonerated from criminal liability in accordance with the principle of “application of the older law if it is more lenient”. Adhering to the priority of cultivated land protection, a comprehensive investigation and resolution of issues such as the forestry-cultivated land and contradiction shall be conducted on the basis of national spatial planning and the results of the Third National Land Survey. Cross-departmental coordination shall be promoted to develop a unified “one map” for territorial spatial management, which shall serve as the basis for the control and supervision of cultivated land and forest land. Scientific planning shall be carried out for the “three redlines”. In the delineation of “three zones and three lines”, current cultivated land within the cultivated land protection redline shall be prioritized into the cultivated land space; areas with important ecological functions or ecologically fragile regions, sloping land above 25 degrees, sloping land above 15 degrees in key water source areas, and forest land in key state-owned forest regions shall be prioritized into the forest land space.

The crime of illegally occupying agricultural land, as the most severe criminal sanction measure, safeguards the bottom line of farmland security. There are disputes in both theoretical and practical aspects regarding the determination of the object of the crime, the composition of the “ three elements” in the objective aspect, the delimitation of the subject scope, and the determination of the psychological state in the subjective aspect. This has led to differences in judicial opinions. The determination of the crime of illegally occupying agricultural land should follow the principle of unity of the legal order, improve the elements of the crime composition, reduce the uncertainty in criminal judicial conviction, and through the combination of normative analysis and empirical analysis, clarify the doubtful elements in the crime composition. The object of the crime should be recognized as a compound interest mainly based on national security interests. The “main and auxiliary” standards for the determination of farmland types in the objective aspect, the nature of compound acts, and the “quantitative” choice for conviction should be determined. The village committee should be included in the subject of the crime, and it should be made clear that the subjective psychological state of the crime includes both direct and indirect intent. This will better achieve the legal function of criminal law in safeguarding national security and serving farmland protection.

As an important part of the legal system of ecological civilization, legal liability for soil pollution is a crucial issue concerning the sustainable economic and social development of humanity. The Changzhou Poisonous Land Case, full of twists and turns, has gone through the first and second instances and is now pending retrial by the Supreme People's Court, serving as a microcosm of the dilemma of soil pollution legal liability in China. Taking this case as a typical example, China's soil pollution legal liability faces a dual dilemma: the conflict of liability between public and private subjects and the confusion of different types of environmental legal liability. It is urgent to conduct a typological analysis of soil pollution legal liability from both public and private perspectives. Firstly, the confirmation of environmental legal liability of the Xinbei District government can be based on the formation process of environmental pollution facts, considering both regulatory provisions and legal obligations. Secondly, the identification of environmental legal liability of the three chemical plants can be discussed from four dimensions: limitation of action differentiation, qualification of liable parties, grounds for exemption from liability, and types and sequence of liability, so as to distinguish environmental civil liability, environmental administrative liability and soil pollution remediation liability. Finally, in combination with the formulation of the Ecological Environment Code, we should improve the legal liability system for soil pollution and optimize the implementation mechanism of public-private coordination.

Under the background of the reform of the entrusted agency of natural resource assets, land banking is an important institutional arrangement for implementing the reform of the ecological civilization system and fulfilling the responsibilities of the owners of land resource assets. However, the current internal and external exercise models of the land banking system have prominently manifested the drawbacks of the natural resource asset management system, such as the mixture of ownership and supervision rights, rigid asset allocation, and deviation from public welfare goals. The agency mechanism for state-owned natural resource assets is a specific exercise method of the state-owned property rights system. Through the transformation of legal concepts, it helps alleviate the exercise problems of the land banking system and reset the logical starting point of the system reform. The land banking system should be adapted to the requirements of the principal-agent mechanism, play an instrumental role in maintaining and promoting the preservation and appreciation of land resources and their market-based allocation, and form a positive feedback loop on the reform of natural resource asset property rights. The operation of the system should be based on the state ownership of land as the legal right foundation. A provincial land banking system should be established corresponding to the exercise level of the entrustment agency mechanism. Land banking institutions should act as market-oriented entities acting as agents to fulfill land ownership, enjoying the decision-making and execution rights of land acquisition, storage, management and supply. Ultimately, this will provide a reference sample for the realization of a full-category natural resource asset reserve management system.

Agricultural new quality productive forces becomes an important force to promote agricultural and rural development, which brought new opportunities and challenges for the balance of arable land occupation and replenishment. We deeply analyzed the connotation of agricultural new quality productivity and explained its characteristics, including being science and technology-driven, high-efficiency, green-sustainable, and high-value- added. We sorted out the current difficulties faced by the balance between occupation and compensation in farmland, including the scarcity of supplementary farmland resources, difficulty in ensuring quality, difficulty in supervision, and insufficient and single sources of funding. To address the above challenges, we explored the positive impact of agricultural new quality productivity on improving the level of farmland occupation and replenishment technology, enhancing the quality of supplementary farmland, improving regulatory efficiency, and efficiently introducing and controlling funds. Based on these, we proposed a path for the innovative development of land occupation and compensation balance driven by agricultural new quality productive forces, including strengthening the application of scientific and technological innovation to expand the ways of supplementing land resources, relying on cutting-edge technologies to improve the overall quality of supplementary land, innovating the supervision mode of land occupation and compensation balance, and efficiently introducing and managing funds. Through these measures, we promoted the sustainable utilization of cultivated land resources and provided theoretical support and practical guidance to ensure national food security.

Exploring the impact mechanism of urban green development on land use efficiency holds significant practical implications for improving urban land use efficiency and achieving carbon neutrality goals in China. This study employed the super-efficiency SBM model and panel clustering analysis to systematically investigate the impact of urban green development on land use efficiency across 285 prefecture-level cities in China from 2005 to 2020. The findings are as follows:(1) Urban green development significantly promotes land use efficiency, and this conclusion remains robust after a series of robustness checks, including the use of terrain ruggedness and river density as instrumental variables.(2) Mechanism analysis reveals that urban green development enhances land use efficiency through mediating pathways such as agglomeration effects, technological effects, and structural effects.(3) Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the promoting effect of urban green development on land use efficiency is more pronounced in the western, central, and non-coastal regions of China.

Land use change was the main cause of the variation in regional carbon sources and sinks. Based on the land use change data of the Xiangjiang River Basin in Hunan Province from 2005 to 2020, the energy coefficient estimation method and land use transfer matrix calculation were adopted to investigate the spatial-temporal variation characteristics and effects of land use change and carbon emissions in this region. The results showed that:(1) Among the land use types, the area of construction land was continuously increased, while the areas of cultivated land, forest land and grassland decreased constantly, and the changes in other land types were not obvious;(2) During this period, the area of construction land increased nearly 100%, the proportion of forest land fluctuated slightly, the area of cultivated land decreased by 5.6%, and the area of grassland shrank by 11.5%;(3) In stages, from 2005 to 2010, nearly 70% of the cultivated land in the Xiangjiang River Basin was net transferred to forest land, and the construction land mainly came from cultivated land and forest land. From 2010 to 2015, the expansion of construction land in the basin mainly came from cultivated land and forest land. From 2018 to 2020, the area change of land use type in the basin was relatively small;(4) The carbon source volume in the Xiangjiang River Basin increased significantly, while the carbon sink volume increased slightly. The carbon sink volume was higher than the carbon source volume, and the gap between the two was narrowing rapidly;(5) Spatially, the temporal and spatial distribution characteristics of carbon sources decreased from the center of the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan urban agglomeration to the periphery, showing a Matthew effect of “the strong getting stronger and the weak getting weaker”.

With the acceleration of urbanization, excessive exploitation and unreasonable utilization of land resources in our country have led to increasingly prominent land ecological problems, and land ecological security is greatly threatened. Based on the “DPSIR” theory, this paper took each district and county of Chengdu as the research objects, established five evaluation levels of land ecological security in Chengdu, conducted a comprehensive assessment of the land ecological security situation in Chengdu from 2016 to 2020, identified the main influencing factors of land ecological security, and provided an effective way for the scientific measurement of land ecological security. The results showed that:(1) The comprehensive index value of land ecological security in Chengdu fluctuated from 2016 to 2020. The comprehensive index of land ecological security was the highest in 2017, reaching 0.502 4, and the lowest in 2018 at 0.303 5.(2) Among all the land ecological subsystems, the response system has the greatest impact on the security of the land ecosystem, with a correlation coefficient of 0.551. From the correlation coefficient matrix, it can be seen that the impact of land ecological security in Chengdu is comprehensive.(3) For the land ecological security situation of various districts and counties in Chengdu from 2016 to 2020, the comprehensive index of land ecological security in Jinniu District decreased the most, while that in Dayi County increased the most. Only six districts and counties in Chengdu, namely Qingyang District, Jinniu District, Jinjiang District, Chenghua District, Xinjin County and Jintang County, reached a relatively safe state in 2016.

Accelerating the digital transformation of manufacturing industries and fostering a virtuous interaction between core digital economy sectors and manufacturing were not only pivotal for industrial upgrading, but also served as crucial drivers for transforming economic development patterns and achieving high-quality economic growth. These initiatives held significant strategic importance for seizing opportunities arising from the new wave of scientific and technological revolution as well as industrial transformation, ultimately advancing economic modernization. Grounded in the window of opportunity theory, the interaction between technological innovation in core digital economy sectors and manufacturing digital transformation constituted a spiral evolutionary process. Taking manufacturing digital transformation as the analytical starting point, three phases emerged: core digital economy sectors providing digital transformation support(window opening), manufacturing enhancing digital transformation capabilities(window responding), and value realization through digital transformation(window internalizing), Throughout this process, policy guidance supporting digital transformation and increasing demand for digitalization created institutional and market conditions that activated technological innovation opportunities in core digital economy sectors, thereby establishing a mutually reinforcing mechanism between the two domains. To further promote synergistic development between core digital economy sectors and manufacturing, it was imperative to strengthen fundamental digital technology innovation, improve data governance frameworks, and enhance digital infrastructure construction. This tripartite approach addressed technological, institutional, and infrastructural dimensions critical for sustainable industrial digitization.

The rural collective economy, as a crucial support for the rural revitalization strategy, urgently required an innovative governance paradigm to overcome its developmental challenges. Against the backdrop of the digital rural action plan for strengthening, benefiting, and enriching farmers proposed in the 2025 Central Document No. 1, this paper dissected the multifaceted challenges in property rights systems, industrial structures, talent markets, and resource funding. It highlighted the role of digital governance in optimizing resource allocation, enhancing industrial added value, strengthening market competitiveness, and alleviating funding shortages. The study further constructed pathways such as building data-sharing platforms, creating digital empowerment for industrial upgrading systems, establishing intelligent matching talent cultivation mechanisms, and perfecting inclusive and precise financial support networks. These pathways provided theoretical support and practical guidance for the sustainable development of the rural collective economy. Looking ahead, as digital technologies continue to evolve and improve, the application of digital governance in rural collective economies will become more extensive and in-depth, injecting new vitality and momentum into the development of rural collective economies.

As a new system design, the unified registration of natural resources rights was an innovative initiative in the construction of ecological civilization, taking on the dual responsibilities of ecological management and protection and property right confirmation. The implementation of the reform over the past nine years had achieved quite fruitful results. However, from the dual perspective of trial legislation and scale practice, the following prominent problems could still be revealed:(1) The scope of the subject matter for the registration of natural resource rights was not clearly defined;(2) The registration of natural resource ownership and the content of territorial spatial planning overlapped to some extent;(3) The classification criteria of natural resources were different;(4) Lack of unified standards for natural resource quality evaluation;(5) The construction of the natural resources right registration information platform was not perfect. This paper regards them as the "Hilbert's problems" in the field of natural resource rights confirmation and registration. To explore these issues in depth, it was necessary to respond to them based on practice and with the assistance of interdisciplinary research, so as to promote the further improvement of the unified registration system of natural resources, and benefit the subsequent natural resource asset property rights “separation of two rights, extension of power empowerment” reform.