The Internal Mechanism of Digital Economy Empowering Gansu Province’s Science and Technology Strengthening Action

The Science and Technology Strengthening Action serves as a core strategic starting point for Gansu Province to break the path dependence of resource-based economy, cultivate new quality productive forces, build a modern industrial system, and promote high-quality economic and social development. Compared with developed provinces in eastern China, scientific and technological innovation in Gansu has long been constrained by structural shortcomings including inefficient factor allocation, blocked R&D chains, weak hardware support, insufficient industrial scenarios, and shortage of human resources. The traditional innovation model relying on factor input, experience-driven decision-making and offline collaboration can no longer adapt to the iterative upgrading of scientific and technological innovation in the new era. Characterized by data elements, digital technologies, computing power infrastructure and scenario integration, the digital economy can systematically reshape the paradigm of regional scientific and technological innovation from four dimensions: innovation factor reconstruction, innovation chain reshaping, innovation foundation consolidation and innovation ecosystem iteration, providing a new logic and path for underdeveloped western regions to achieve leapfrog development and quality improvement in scientific and technological innovation. Based on the resource endowments, industrial structure, scientific and technological foundation of Gansu Province and the national strategic location advantages of the Eastern Data, Western Computing initiative, this paper adopts the innovation factor allocation theory, digital innovation theory and new quality productive force theory to systematically deconstruct the deep internal mechanism of the digital economy empowering Gansu’s Science and Technology Strengthening Action. It respectively elaborates the resource reconstruction mechanism of data elements, the full-chain iteration mechanism of digital technologies, the hard-core supporting mechanism of green computing power, and the dynamic activation mechanism of industrial scenarios, and further reveals the coupling and synergistic relationship among the four mechanisms, constructing a four-dimensional empowerment theoretical framework of “factor reconstruction-technology empowerment-infrastructure support-scenario-driven development”. The research shows that the empowerment of the digital economy is not a simple instrumental application, but a systematic, structural and subversive upgrading of regional scientific and technological innovation through factor reform, process reengineering and ecological reshaping, which effectively solves the practical problems of scattered scientific and technological resources, low R&D efficiency, obstructed achievement transformation and insufficient innovation motivation in Gansu. This study enriches the theoretical system of digital science and technology integration in western Chinese provinces, and provides theoretical support and academic basis for Gansu to further deepen the Science and Technology Strengthening Action, promote the in-depth integration of digital economy and scientific and technological innovation, and foster new regional innovation advantages.