Digital Economy and Rural Industrial Integration in Ethnic Minority Areas of Sichuan: A Theoretical Analysis of Driving Mechanisms

Digital technologies can connect geographically dispersed rural producers with markets, but greater connectivity does not necessarily constitute industrial integration. Focusing on the ethnic minority areas of Sichuan, China, this paper examines how digitalization may transform separate activities in agriculture, processing, distribution, and services into coordinated economic relationships. Drawing on transaction cost economics and the literature on rural industrial integration, it develops a four-stage analytical framework: lowering information and transaction costs, improving cross-industry factor matching, coordinating agricultural value chains, and creating complementary value across industrial boundaries. The analysis distinguishes the potential benefits of digital technologies from the organizational conditions needed to realize them. It argues that infrastructure complementarities, production standards, contractual reliability, local capabilities, and benefit-sharing arrangements condition whether digital connections become durable industrial linkages. The framework offers a bounded theoretical interpretation of digital-driven rural industrial integration in mountainous ethnic minority areas and identifies questions for subsequent empirical research.