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Green transitions have emerged as a salient ecological and political-economic practice in urban China over the past decade. Most studies on such transitions have focused on the role of technological innovations and market instruments in facilitating economic upgrades and green development. However, the spatial analytical perspective, which interprets green transitions through their manifestations in urban ecological spaces, remains underexplored. This paper uses the Xinzhou River in Shenzhen as a case study and argues that nature is inseparable from human society and that green transitions represent a reconfiguration of socionatural relations amidst urbanization. We conceptualize urban waterscapes not merely as physical containers of water but also as socionatures embodying political agendas, institutional changes, social power, and symbolic meanings. Through an extensive review of archival material and semistructured interviews, our analysis delineates three distinct ontologies of waterscapes produced and reproduced in Shenzhen’s urbanization process: first, a drainage channel that the state created to attract and protect global capital for urban development; second, an “ecological fix” to help the local government fulfill environmental protection mandates and sustain development; and third, an image of quality urban life offering recreational, aesthetic, and ecological functions and a new means to foster a harmonious human-water relationship and sustainability. The transformation of the Xinzhou River’s waterscapes illustrates the complex interplay and mutual shaping that occurs among the state, the economy, nature and society, revealing the relational, dialectical and materialistic nature of China’s green transitions.

Food saving is a pressing global challenge, and understanding its divergent framings is vital for designing effective strategies. This study examines the alignment and divergence between media discourse and individual attitudes toward food saving in China using a mixed-methods approach that combines content analysis of 123 news articles with Q-methodology involving 60 participants. Drawing on Boltanski and Thévenot’s framework of seven value orders, the research identifies “domesticity” as a core value emphasized by both media and individuals, while media narratives underrepresent values such as “the environment” and “inspiration,” which are central to individual perspectives. This misalignment highlights why awareness campaigns often fail to effect substantial behavioral change. By analyzing the interplay between media narratives and public attitudes, the study not only provides actionable insights for policymakers and educators in China, but also offers a transferable model for interpreting frame (mis)alignment in other rapidly modernizing, state-led contexts. The proposed multi-level explanatory model contributes to international food policy scholarship by advancing the theoretical understanding of how value orders shape, and sometimes constrain, effective interventions in food saving governance.

Household energy consumption is gradually accounting for a significant proportion of overall energy consumption; thus, promoting households’ implementation of sustainable energy consumption behaviors at the household level becomes increasingly important. Within the framework of the social practices model, this study examines how infrastructure and lifestyle work together to influence sustainable cooking energy consumption choices and finds that both improved infrastructure and modernized lifestyles positively affect households’ adoption of sustainable cooking practices. This study further analyzes the urban‒rural differences in cooking practices among different groups and reveals that the influence of infrastructure on sustainable cooking practices is more pronounced in urban areas, whereas the influence of lifestyle on cooking practices is dominant in rural areas. Finally, this study also examined the mediating effect of social trust, and the findings suggest that internet use enhances social trust, which in turn motivates households to adopt sustainable cooking practices. These findings have important practical implications for promoting a sustainable transition in household energy consumption in China to achieve the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals.

Social stratification is a classic topic in sociology. Some studies have focused on class variations in pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs), with existing research yielding inconsistent results. This inconsistency may be due to the varying measurements of PEBs, as well as the complexity of class definitions. In this article, we focus on four types of PEBs (domestic recycling, green purchase behavior, good citizen behavior, and environmental activism) and comprehensively examine differences in these behaviors across objective classes, subjective classes, and class discordance. Using CGSS2021 data, this study finds that individuals in the lower objective class are more likely to participate in domestic recycling than those in the middle and upper classes, whereas individuals in the higher objective and subjective classes exhibit more green purchase behavior and engage in more good citizen behavior. The middle objective and subjective classes are found to be the most active group in environmental activism. Additionally, this study pioneers the exploration of the relationship between class discordance and PEBs. The results reveal that the underestimation of one’s own objective class significantly hinders participation in domestic recycling and green purchase behavior. This study highlights the importance of considering not only the different types of PEBs but also the complexity of class measurement.