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As there are different interpretations of the object of study in the preface to the first edition of Capital (Volume I) by Karl Marx, disagreements arise over the object of study on political economy, which becomes a “difficult problem.” The purpose of the paper is to bring a new solution to the “difficult problem.”

Based on the analysis of the logic of the original text, the authors attempted to give a new interpretation of the “difficult problem” by analyzing the structure of Capital. The object of study of political economy is “the relations of production in the broad sense” of the capitalist mode of production.

It comprises relations of production in the narrow sense and exchange relations in the broad sense, and the latter can be divided into exchange relations in the narrow sense and distribution relations. The three of them correspond to Volume I, II and III of Capital, respectively. Consumption in “the four-section theory” is not studied by the political economy.

And the four-section theory is not a part of the theory of Marxist economics but a part of the classical economics criticized by Marx. Therefore, the object of study of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics is “the relations of production in the broad sense” regarding the socialist mode of production with Chinese characteristics, which is different from the capitalist relations of production in the broad sense.

This paper examines the different features of China's economic development in different stages of economic globalization. The study finds that the investment- and export-based growth model drove China's high-speed economic growth between 2000 and 2007, which came into existence around 2000 when China plugged into the global production network.

This paper also finds that China slowed down to the New Normal because of the disruption to the socio-economic underpinnings of this growth model. As China adapts to and steers the New Normal, supply-side structural reforms can channel excess capacity to the construction of underground pipe networks in rural areas of central China and fix capital while advance rural revitalization.

At the same time, enterprises must strive to build a key component development platform for key component innovation and the standard-setting power in global manufacturing.

The establishment of a domestic production network integrating the integrated innovation-driven core enterprises and modular producers at different levels can satisfy the dynamic demand structure of China in which standardized demands and personalized demands coexist.

The aim of this paper is reviewing the discipline development course of the history of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics and recognising the changes of its development and its historic mission in the new stage will be beneficial to the construction of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics from the perspective of doctrinal history.

In this paper from the aspect of discipline formation and development, the history of China’s socialist political economy has experienced two stages: emergence and formation (the first stage) and steady development (the second stage). It has explored new research fields and improved the quality of research levels. However, the role of studying the history of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics has not been fully played regarding satisfying the needs of constructing socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics.

In this study when the construction of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics entered a new era, the study of the history of socialist political economy also entered a new stage, showing new features in terms of research objectives, principles, scale and methods.

Therefore, the research on the history of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics should be highly emphasised, and the focus on serving the construction of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics should be its historic mission and core task. Also, researchers should pay attention to changing ideas, laying a good foundation, highlighting key points, building platforms and broadening horizons.

As a crucial institutional form established since the Chinese economic reform, the system of competitive local governments has been shaping the characteristics of China's socialist market economy to a considerable degree.

This study not only adopts the view of existing studies that attribute the economic motive of local governments to rent and consider land public finance as a means through which local governments carry out strategic investment but also attempts to further develop the view within a Marxist analytical framework.

As a result, the local governments have helped to maintain an incredibly high investment rate over a considerable period of time, facilitating the continuous, rapid growth of the Chinese economy.

This study concludes that China's local governments function as the productive allocator and user of rent in the strategic investment based on land public finance and thereby embed themselves in the relative surplus-value production initially arising from competition amongst enterprises, forming the dual structure of relative surplus-value production unique to China's economy.

The stability maintenance system has played an essential role in maintaining social stability although it also has brought about social problems worthy of attention. Admittedly compensation-based stability maintenance policy can address the appeals of citizens whose rights are infringed and the dissolving effect in the provision of compensation can save the cost of stability maintenance but such stability maintenance system lacks equilibrium.

The establishment of a strict assessment system for stability maintenance performance can encourage the stability maintenance authorities to eliminate the “fuse effect” as much as possible and ensure the effective implementation of the stability maintenance system. However, the rigorous stability maintenance performance assessment also provides the possibility for profit-driven petitions.

Due to the continuous accumulation of social dissatisfaction and the lack of stability maintenance equilibrium in the implementation of the compensation-based stability maintenance policy, public governance will fall into a stability maintenance paradox of “greater instability resulting from stability maintenance”.

The provision of sufficient means for the people to protect their interest by implementing measures such as strengthening the rule of law mechanisms is the key to achieve long-term social stability.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, tremendous changes have taken place in the US economy – the economic growth in the whole year of 2020 was negative, and though it enjoyed a significant rebound for the first half of 2021, the growth rate began to decline rapidly by the third quarter, and inflation suddenly rises rapidly, which after came the all-time highs of the “misery index” consisted of the inflation rate and unemployment rate. All signs indicate that the US economy will likely enter a “stagflation” crisis.

This paper analyzes the institutional and social contradictions in the United States during the neoliberal era from the perspectives of domestic social structure of accumulation (SSA) and international SSA based on the SSA theory.

The current risk of stagflation in the US economy is a concentrated outbreak of the long-term accumulated contradictions in neoliberal SSA under the impact of the epidemic, which is the product of the irreconcilable contradictions inherent in the capitalist mode of production.

Based on this analysis, the paper points out that with the deepening of the crisis, the neoliberal SSA is likely to end and a new SSA will be established gradually.

In the current literature, there is little systematic research on the relationship among adjustment of the income distribution, change in economic structure and improvement of macroeconomic efficiency.

This paper expands Marx's reproduction schema into the “Marx–Sraffa” three-department structure table comprising fixed capital, general means of production and means of consumption and employs China's input–output table from 1987 to 2015 to portray the relationship between income distribution and macroeconomic efficiency under investment-driven growth.

This paper calculates the wage–profit curve of China's economy and evaluates the space of macroeconomic efficiency improvement in China based on the deviation between actual and potential income distribution structure.

The results show that there is a downward trend of the profit rate, which meets Marx's theoretical prediction, and the decline in the profit rate is mainly attributed to an increase in the organic composition of capital arising from the rapid growth of fixed capital investment under extended growth. The analysis of macroeconomic efficiency shows that the space for improving macroeconomic efficiency is extremely limited under traditional growth pattern and that China must transform its economic development pattern and foster new economic growth drivers.

The study aims to take a step back and take the big picture of how digital capitalism is changing people's ways of living and production. On that basis, China should enhance its digital governance rationally and develop the digital economy efficiently, thereby bringing its socialist economy to new heights.

The rise of digital capitalism in the 1990s has profoundly changed the ways of consumption, employment, production organization and investment in the realm of capitalism.

Digital Capitalism has not changed the nature of capitalism, that is, exploitation and capital accumulation, which continue only in a more profound, extensive and covert way.

For the economy of socialist China to grow in the new era, China should tap into digital economy platforms, take a people-centered approach and let the people jointly develop the digital economy, share the fruits of development and participate in the governance of the digital economy. The government should leverage its modern digital governance and a high-quality digital economy to meet people's ever-growing demand for a better life.

To realise the shared development of the digital economy, people need to transcend the capital logic and advocate the logic of cooperative development, i.e. “co-construction, benefit-sharing and co-governance”. This study aims to discuss the aforementioned statement.

Platform economy is a new economic form produced by the transformation of the social production patterns in the era of digital capitalism. In the neo-imperialist stage, a new stage of capitalist development, capital logic promotes the global expansion of the platform economy and influences its development process, organisational form, contradictions and dilemmas and internal transcendence. Having the spatiotemporal chain of capital circulation repaired, the globalisation of the platform economy is reshaping how the means of production are combined with labour, affecting the local changes in the general relations of production and “international relations of production”.

In the accumulation of digital capitalism, the social contradictions and fundamental contradictions in the capitalist world have been further intensified, making exploitation, income distribution gap, monopoly and other problems increasingly severe. The imbalance and inequality in the global development of the digital economy are increasingly prominent.

Regarding the global governance of the digital economy, China, as a major responsible country, will strive to encourage all countries to co-build a community with a shared future in cyberspace. In the new international development pattern of digital economy globalisation, China must take effective measures to actively safeguard its national security and development interests to meet specific challenges.

This paper aims to establish a theoretical framework that can comprehensively explain the executive compensation in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) within the context of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

The author develops a theoretical framework for executive compensation in SOEs from the perspective of Marxist economics and points out that the executives in SOEs are engaged in management labor, and their compensation should adhere to the principle of distribution according to labor contribution.

Based on this theory, the author posits that the continuous upward trend of executive compensation in SOEs, is consistent with the trend of SOEs' ongoing expansion, which reflects a continuous improvement of SOE executives' management labor in both quality and quantity.

It is necessary to start with Marxist economic theory and scientifically study the issue of SOE executive compensation, adhere to the principle of distribution according to work in the context of a socialist market economy and implement the specific guideline of the Party Central Committee; only in this way can the long-term healthy development of SOEs be promoted continuously.