The Impact of China’s Free Trade Zone Policies on the Development of Digital Economy in the Background of Big Data

In the era of big data, digitalization has become a new opportunity for regional development. Grasping the frontier of digital economy development is the requirement of the times to realize the high-quality development of Free Trade Zones. This paper empirically studies the impact of the establishment of Free Trade Zones on the development of a digital economy based on the difference-in-difference method using the panel data of 31 provinces in China from 2011 to 2021. The research results show that the establishment of Free Trade Zone can significantly promote the development of a digital economy, and the conclusion still holds after the robustness test.