Research on the Mechanism of Digital Empowerment for the Integrated and Symbiotic Development of Industry and Towns

Addressing the long-standing structural disconnection issues of “having towns without industries” and “having industries without towns” at the township level in China, and in the context of the in-depth promotion of China’s digital rural strategy, this study, based on panel data from 1508 counties in China from 2018 to 2020, systematically reveals the empowering mechanism of digital technology on the integration of industries and towns through fixed-effects models and dual machine learning causality tests. The empirical results indicate that digital technology promotes coordinated urban-rural development by significantly enhancing the level of industry-town integration. The main pathways of its impact rely on three mechanisms: residents’ wealth accumulation, labor factor return, and expansion of external demand markets. Furthermore, the empowering effect of digital technology exhibits a pronounced “pro-poor” characteristic, with a significantly stronger impact in key poverty-stricken counties compared to non-poverty-stricken counties, and a higher promotional effect in regions with lower resident income compared to higher income regions. This finding provides micro-level evidence for the digital economy driving common prosperity.