Study on the effect of digital economy on high-quality economic development in China

Abstract

At present, the digital economy, which takes information technology and data as the key elements, is booming and has become an important force in promoting the economic growth of various countries. In order to explore the current dynamic trend of China’s digital economy development and the impact of the digital economy on the high-quality economic development, this paper measures the digital economic development index of 30 cities in China from the three dimensions of digital infrastructure, digital industry, and digital integration, uses panel data of 30 cities in China from 2015 to 2019 to construct an econometric model for empirical analysis, and verifies the mediating effect of technological progress between the digital economy and high-quality economic development. The results show that (1) The development level of China’s digital economy is increasing year by year, that the growth of digital infrastructure is obvious, and that the development of the digital industry is relatively slow. (2) Digital infrastructure, digital industry and digital integration all have significant positive effects on regional total factor productivity, and the influence coefficients are 0.2452, 0.0773 and 0.3458 respectively. (3) Regarding the transmission mechanism from the digital economy to the high-quality economic development, the study finds that the mediating effect of technological progress is 0.1527, of which the mediating effect of technological progress in the eastern, northeast, central and western regions is 1.70%, 9.25%, 28.89% and 21.22% respectively. (4) From the perspective of spatial distribution, the development level of the digital economy in the eastern region is much higher than that in other non-eastern regions, and the development of digital economy in the eastern region has a higher marginal contribution rate to the improvement of the total factor productivity. This study can provide a theoretical basis and practical support for the government to formulate policies for the development of the digital economy.

Assessing the Impact of the Digital Economy on Green Total Factor Energy Efficiency in the Post-COVID-19 Era

“…Meanwhile, digital economy scale is expanding year after year because of China's ongoing commitment to digital infrastructure. For example, according to the statistics in 2019, digital economy reached 35.8 trillion yuan, which accounted for 36.2% of GDP, rendering China's digital economy scale second in the world behind the United States (Zhang et al, 2021). 3 .…”

Digital Economy, Agricultural Technological Progress, and Agricultural Carbon Intensity: Evidence from China

“…Based on this, this paper defines the digital economy as an information production factor that uses the Internet as a carrier for economic activities. At present, the digital economy has become the engine of global economic growth and the most active area of China’s economic development [ 13 , 14 , 15 ]. The “White Paper on China’s Digital Economy Development” ( , access date: 28 April 2022) released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology in April 2021 shows that the scale of China’s digital economy in 2020 was 39.2 trillion Yuan, an increase of 3.3 trillion Yuan over the preceding year.…”

How does digital technology affect manufacturing upgrading? Theory and evidence from China

“…The technological transformation and upgrading of the industry promote global value chain to expand digitally [ 11 ]. The parallel advancement and integration of manufacturing industry along technological route of digitization, networking and intelligence is the main way to realize intelligent manufacturing, and it is also main direction of the manufacturing power [ 12 , 13 ]. Digital transformation of manufacturing is the key to achieve industrial transformation.…”