Intelligent Manufacturing Pilot Demonstrations and Corporate ESG Performance: Evidence from Chinese Listed Manufacturers

This study examines whether China’s Intelligent Manufacturing Pilot Demonstration Program is associated with changes in Huazheng-rated environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance among listed manufacturing firms. Using a panel of 2581 firms from 2012 to 2022, we exploit the staggered admission of 91 pilot firms. The preferred doubly robust group-time difference-in-differences estimator yields an average treatment effect of 0.881 Huazheng points, positive at the 10% level. The conventional firm and year fixed-effects estimate is 1.801 points and significant at the 1% level; it is retained as a benchmark rather than the main policy estimate. The direction remains positive across alternative fixed effects, lagged controls, a pre-COVID-19 sample, reweighting, matching, stacked estimation, randomization inference, wild-cluster bootstrap inference, and leave-one-out tests. Under the benchmark specification, the environmental and governance ratings rise significantly, whereas the social estimate is imprecise. The organizational regressions are consistent with possible information verification, managerial incentive, and financing channels, and cross-fitted double machine learning provides a functional-form check. Overall, pilot designation is associated with higher Huazheng-rated ESG performance, with evidence consistent with a possible policy effect. Selective designation and the provider-specific outcome preclude stronger claims about independently verified corporate sustainability.