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Article History

Received: 9 May 2025

Accepted: 18 September 2025

First Online: 17 November 2025

Competing interests

: The authors declare no competing interests.

: The research presented in this article is based exclusively on the analysis of publicly available data. All financial and ESG data pertaining to the Chinese listed manufacturing firms were obtained from the China Stock Market & Accounting Research (CSMAR) database and Wind Economic Database (Wind), which are standard, commercially available sources for academic research in the field. No primary data collection involving human or animal participants was conducted by the authors. Therefore, in accordance with the policies of our institution and standard academic practice for secondary data analysis of this nature, formal approval from an ethics committee was not required for this study.

: This study utilized only anonymized, aggregated, and publicly available secondary data at the corporate level. The data sources do not contain any personally identifiable information about the executives beyond their professional and biographical backgrounds (e.g., age, gender, work history, military experience), which are considered matters of public record for individuals in such roles. As the research did not involve direct interaction with any human participants and relied on data that is not private or confidential, obtaining informed consent was not applicable or required for this study.