How Does the Digital Economy Empower the High-Quality Development of Manufacturing Industry?—Based on the Test of Mediation Effect and Threshold Effect

Manufacturing industry is an important pillar industry of the national economy, with the deep development of the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial revolution, the manufacturing industry is facing new opportunities and challenges, and the deep integration of the digital economy and manufacturing industry has become an important engine to promote the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry structure and high-quality development. This paper empirically investigates whether the development of digital economy can promote the high-quality development of China’s manufacturing industry based on the panel data of 30 Chinese provinces from 2012 to 2021. The results of the study show that, firstly, from the full sample level, the development of digital economy can significantly enhance the level of high-quality development of China’s manufacturing industry. From the perspective of regional heterogeneity, the development of digital economy in the eastern region of China can significantly improve the high-quality development level of regional manufacturing industry. Secondly, the regression results of enterprise innovation ability with intermediate variables show that the digital economy can pull the level of high-quality development of the manufacturing industry by enhancing the innovation capacity of enterprises, and this mechanism is verified through the moderating effect of introducing the interaction term of the digital economy and enterprise innovation capacity. Thirdly, the regression results of the threshold effect show that with the further improvement of the level of the opening up, it will make the digital economy better promote the level of high-quality development of our manufacturing industry, and with the continuous improvement of the intensity of environmental regulation, the digital economy has a non-linear characteristic of diminishing marginal effect on the high-quality development of China’s manufacturing industry. Therefore, the government needs to continuously improve the construction of digital infrastructure, focus on expanding the application scope of digital technology, and accelerate the integration of digital technology and the real economy, give full play to the intermediary effect of enterprise innovation ability, and continue to provide a strong guarantee for the high-quality development of China’s manufacturing industry.