The Impact of Digital Economy on the Sustainable and High-Quality Development of Manufacturing Industry: An Empirical Analysis Based on Chinese Sub-Sector Manufacturing Industry

The use of a new generation of information technology to promote the transformation of the manufacturing industry is an inevitable path to achieve rapid regional economic development at this stage. In order to explore the interaction between the digital economy and the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry, this paper examines the relationship between the role of the digital economy on the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry in a multidimensional way using panel data from 30 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities and 11 manufacturing sub-sectors in China from 2013 to 2022. The results of the study show that: the overall level of China’s digital economy and manufacturing development has increased year by year, and the inter-regional development gap has narrowed; capital- and technology-intensive industries are significantly more sensitive to the digital economy than labor-intensive industries; in the process of the high-quality impact of the digital economy on China’s manufacturing industry, innovation activities have become an important medium; the impact of the digital economy on the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry has shown a significant non-linear relationship, and the impact of the digital economy on different types of industries has shown a differentiation. Due to the sinking effect and network effect of digital technology, the digital economy has a threshold effect on the impact of the development of manufacturing industry, and the impact of the digital economy on the labor-intensive manufacturing industry shows “inhibition and then promotion,” while the capital and technology-intensive manufacturing industry shows “promotion and then inhibition and then promotion” characteristics.