Jinchen Xie

Background: The implementation of China’s “Double Reduction” (DR) policy, which aims to alleviate academic and extracurricular burdens, has received considerable attention. However, there has been limited evaluation of public satisfaction with the policy, particularly from a regional and multi-dimensional support perspective. This study aims to assess DR policy satisfaction from Chinese public, through a comprehensive “government–market–school” perspective. Methods: Combining the web scraping technology and sentiment analysis technology, this study captures 2,475,833 Weibo posts from 31 provinces in China related to DR policy. The causal relationship is discussed through spatial regression after controlling for spatial endogeneity. Results: The findings indicate that Chinese residents generally express positive satisfaction with the DR policy, however, substantial regional disparities persist. Provinces in the western and central regions exhibit lower increases in DR policy satisfaction (DRS) compared to those in the eastern region. All three dimensions—political, market, and educational support—have significant positive effects on DRS. Moreover, the results reveal positive moderations among the three types of support. Political support exerts a stronger influence on DRS in western provinces, whereas market support plays a more prominent role in eastern provinces. No significant interprovincial variation is observed for the effects of educational support. Conclusions: The study highlights the crucial role of political, market, and educational support in shaping public satisfaction with the DR policy. These findings suggest that targeted interventions are needed to address regional disparities, particularly in underdeveloped areas. Future research should focus on the long-term effects of the DR policy across diverse socio-economic contexts.

Objective: Obesity has become a major public health problem worldwide and particularly in China. This study examined the secular trend of overweight and obesity in China over the past 100 years.Methods: Nationwide data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey and the Chinese General Social Survey were used. A generalized binary mixed‐effects model and a weighted quantile sum model were applied.Results: From 1909 to 2021, the prevalence of overweight and obesity remained stable from 1909 to 1944, experienced a smooth increase from 1945 to 1959 followed by a decline between 1960 and 1974, continued to rise after 1975, and peaked in 2003. The prevalence of overweight (obesity) among Chinese adults increased by 2.68 (6.21) times, from 20.65% (3.10%) in 1993 to 55.33% (19.26%) in 2021, and cohorts born during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1960–1974) exhibited the lowest risk of overweight and obesity, associated with low protein intake and high physical activity. Cohorts born during the Reform and Opening‐Up period (1975–2003) showed a high risk of overweight and obesity related to favorable socioeconomic status and rapid urbanization. Persistent differences by sex and emerging differences by socioeconomic status in overweight and obesity prevalence were captured.Conclusions: Overweight and obesity trends in China have shown a distinctive increasing–decreasing–increasing pattern over the past 100 years. These patterns exhibit unique characteristics and are influenced by discernible social forces.

Dementia has been cited as a critical public health risk in the contemporary world, while few empirical researchers try to reveal the casual relationship between air pollutant concentrations (APCs) and dementia, especially given the increasing prevalence of air pollution on a global scale. Accordingly, this paper tries to infer the causal relationship between APCs and dementia. The 59,605 valid data was compiled through a combination of the statistic from the China Family Panel Study, China Environmental Statistics Yearbook, World Meteorological Association and China National Bureau of Statistics. The RD design of this study utilizes the discontinuous variation in APCs and dementia as one crosses the Huai River boundary, which is an arbitrary heating policy that causes the significant difference in APCs between the north and south of China. We used stata17.0 to analyze the data. The results of the RD regression indicated that a 100 μ g/m³ rise in APCs led to an increase of 42.4% in the hazard ratio of suffering dementia (Coeff=-0.58, SD= 0.23, P < 0.05). Meanwhile, heterogeneous models revealed that the hazard ratio of suffering dementia by APCs was more significant in the older compared to younger (coeff= 1.35 vs coeff= 1.55, P < 0.05), male compared to female (coeff= 1.62 vs coeff= 0.71, P < 0.05), smoking compared to non-smoke (coeff= 2.12 vs coeff= 0.93, P < 0.05), and thin groups compared to medium and obesity (coeff= 2.05 vs coeff= 1.22, coeff= 1.28, P < 0.05). In addition, the O3 and SO2 were the air pollutants with the highest (coeff= 1.54, P < 0.05) and lowest effects (coeff= 0.81, P < 0.05) on the hazard ratio of suffering dementia among the five APCs, respectively. And the robustness of the results was ensured by changing the RD bandwidth, polynomial order. The results indicated that APCs significantly induced the hazard ratio of suffering dementia of Chinese residents, which provides empirical evidence in supporting the Chinese government to invest more in combating air pollution and ensure the public health of Chinese residents.

Background: COVID-19 has influenced education systems worldwide, and significantly increased screen time for college students, posing a potential risk of myopia. In China, ninety percent of college students suffer from myopia. Excessive screen time changes college students' lifestyles, imposes potential health risks, and affects opportunities for employment. It is important to identify the potential correlation between screen time use and myopia among college students.Methods: This paper conducted a nationwide experiment using Chinese college students and set a multiple-mediator SEM model to analyze the potential correlation between screen time and myopia. The two mediators were sedentary behavior and physical activity, respectively.Results: We obtained three valuable conclusions as follows: First, there was no significant direct relationship between screen time and myopia among Chinese college students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, sedentary behavior and physical activity significantly predicted the increase/decrease of myopia among Chinese college students, respectively. Third, a serial multiple mediator that encompassed sedentary behavior and physical activity sequentially fully mediated the relationship between screen time and myopia.Conclusions: Although there was no directly significant relationship between screen time and myopia, screen time can indirectly influence the risk of suffering myopia by influencing sedentary behavior and physical activity. Our study demonstrates the need to prevent the potential influence of overuse of electronic devices on myopia in college students, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many scholars focus on China’s booming economy and its social impacts, while there is little attention regarding subjective well-being, especially after considering income and social capital. Therefore, the purpose of this paper was to examine the correlations between income, social capital and subjective well-being of western Chinese residents, basing on a representative comprehensive social survey. Several meaningful conclusions are shown below: (1) Western residents in China retain a relatively high degree of subjective well-being on average, and the mean value of subjective well-being for urban residents is slightly higher than that for rural residents; (2) there are regional and group differences in the influence of income and social capital on residents’ subjective well-being; and (3), although economic factors play a primary role in subjective well-being, the potential influence of non-economic factors cannot be ignored. This paper attempts to fill the gap in perspective regarding potential correlations between income, social capital, and subjective well-being.

Emerging evidence suggests that poor mental health is particularly pronounced among Chinese residents, who are exposed to nearly the worst air pollution worldwide. However, the correlations between air pollutant concentration and mental health have not been consistently reported in previous studies. Methodologically speaking, a sufficiently rigorous design is required to demonstrate the causal relationship between the two factors. In this study, we aimed to infer the causal relationship between air pollutant concentration and mental health. In this panel research, the data were compiled through a combination of statistics from the China Family Panel Study, China Environmental Statistics Yearbook, World Meteorological Association, and China National Bureau of Statistics. Ultimately, this study enrolled 65,326 individuals whose mental health, air pollutant concentration, and other demographic information was available and robust. The RD design of this study utilizes the discontinuous variation in air pollutant concentrations and mental health as one crosses the Huai River boundary, which is an arbitrary heating policy that caused the difference in air pollutant concentrations between the north and south of China. In this study, we found that a 10 μg/m³ increase in air pollutant concentrations (air particulate matter smaller than 10 μm (PM₁₀)) leads to a 4.9-unit decrease in the mental health of the Chinese residents(coeff = 0.49, SD = 0.07, p < 0.05), equivalent to 36% of the average of Chinese residents. In the heterogeneity model, the impairment of mental health by air pollutant concentrations was more pronounced in male residents (coeff = 1.37, SD = 0.10, p < 0.05) compared to female residents (coeff = 0.42, SD = 0.04, p < 0.05) and smokers (compared to non-smokers). The robustness of the results is ensured by changing the RD bandwidth and polynomial order, and by two unique sensitivity analyses. The results indicate that air pollutant concentrations significantly impair the mental health of Chinese residents, which provides empirical evidence supporting the Chinese government’s decision to invest more in combating air pollution and ensuring the mental health of Chinese residents.

During the economic boom, China’s government was mainly concerned with economic development; however, numerous environmental problems have arisen. Evidence suggests that Chinese individuals’ pro-environmental behavior (PEB) is at a low level in Asia. However, it does not match their high-quality environmental knowledge. In this paper, the database of the Chinese General Social Survey was used to explore the correlation between environmental knowledge and PEB in a broader context. Subsequently, environmental perception and post-materialistic values (PMV) were taken as the mediator and moderator into structural equation modeling, and every variable kept robust and consistent through exploratory factor analysis. The empirical results indicated that: (i) individuals with higher environmental knowledge always show higher passion to PEB; (ii) environmental perception plays a partially mediating role between environmental knowledge and PEB; (iii) PMV moderate the formation of environmental behavior systematically; and (iv) compared with public counterpart, the relation between environmental knowledge and PEB is significantly higher in private environmental behavior. The study results could become the basis for the Chinese government and environmental NGOs to effectively spread environmental knowledge, advocate a post-materialistic lifestyle, and improve the authenticity of online media reports on environmental issues.