Digital economy on high-quality manufacturing development: a spatial spillover and regional coordination perspective

The deep integration of the digital economy with the real economy facilitates the high-quality development of the manufacturing sector. This study has built an index system to measure both the digital economy and the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry. It uses panel data from 30 Chinese provinces and municipalities from 2016 to 2021 and adopts the entropy method to quantify the development levels of digital economy across different regions in China. This study has also built a spatial impact model to explore how the digital economy influences the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry. The results indicate that the digital economy, which provides abundant digital tools and data resources, significantly boosts the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry. Moreover, the growth of digital economy in one region not only accelerates the development of local manufacturing industry but also positively influences its neighboring regions. Digital economy shows a pronounced spatial spillover effect. These findings accentuate the profound spatial diffusion impact of the digital economy and emphasize the criticality of regional coordination in nurturing enduring industrial metamorphosis.