Has the Digital Economy Empowered the High-quality Development of China's Foreign Trade—Empirical Evidence from 30 Provincial Panel Data

The digital economy, as the main building block of the new quality productivity, is a key driving force for the high-quality development of foreign trade, but whether it has empowered the high-quality development of China's foreign trade and produced substantial economic effects is a question worthy of empirical research. Based on the 2011—2020 empirical data of 30 Chinese provinces, this paper constructs a panel regression model to discuss the impact of the digital economy on the high-quality development of foreign trade, and further empirically examines the path of the mechanism of the digital economy on the high-quality development of foreign trade using a model of the mediating effect of industrial structure upgrading and R&D innovation on the high-quality development of foreign trade, and finally illustrates how the high-quality development of foreign trade in different provinces has a significant impact on the decoupling degree of low value-added manufacturing exports in different provinces. The results show that China's digital economy positively promotes the development of high quality of foreign trade, but there is regional heterogeneity, according to the intensity of the impact of the digital economy on the high quality of foreign trade from high to low is the east, central and west, furthermore, the digital economy can positively promote the development of high quality of foreign trade through the mediating effect of the upgrading of the industrial structure and the R&D and innovation, however, the high quality of the growth of the high quality of foreign trade in the majority of the provinces of China has been decoupled from the high quality of the low value-added manufacturing exports decoupled.