The Impact of digital economy on Chinese provinces Industrial Structure Upgrading: From the Perspective of Real Estate Dependence

For decades, China has leaned heavily on the real estate industry to fuel its overall economic growth, yet this entrenched development model has increasingly constrained industrial structure optimization and slowed the pace of high-quality economic development, while the fast-growing digital economy (hereafter referred to as DE) has opened up a new practical path to break through this long-standing dilemma. This study incorporates the DE, real estate dependence, and industrial structure upgrading into a unified analytical framework to explore the specific mechanisms by which the DE drives industrial upgrading in Chinese cities. The empirical results show that DE development delivers a notable positive effect on both the rationalization and advancement of the industrial structure, and declining real estate dependence acts as a core mediating channel behind this effect: by weakening local governments’ reliance on land-based fiscal revenue and real estate investment, the DE redirects core productive resources from property development activities toward the real economy, and the industrial upgrading effect of the DE is not uniform across regions, usually performing more prominently in areas with higher factor marketization levels. This study addresses the fragmented limitation of existing research, deepens theoretical understanding of the internal link between the DE and industrial upgrading, and provides reliable empirical evidence and actionable policy references for cities working to reduce real estate dependence, deepen the integration of digital technologies and the real economy, and achieve high-quality industrial transformation.