Research On The Impact Of Digital Economy Development On The Green Transformation Of Manufacturing Industry

The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out that it is necessary to build a modern industrial system and focus on developing the real economy.Manufacturing is the foundation of building a modern industrial system and the focus of promoting the quality and efficiency of the real economy.At this stage,China has established the world’s most complete manufacturing industry chain,and has been stable forefront in scale and category of the world for many years.However,China’s manufacturing industry is also facing many challenges.On the one hand,China’s manufacturing industry still has certain gaps with advanced countries in some core technologies and the production of highend equipment.Insufficient independent innovation has led to some "stranglehold" problems.On the other hand,the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals have become a medium and long-term constraint on the development of the manufacturing industry.Some manufacturing enterprises still follow the production model of high investment,high emission,and low product added value,which is obviously contrary to China’s high-quality economic development and ecological civilization construction.It is urgent to achieve green production.These problems have become the restrictive factors for the transformation of manufacturing industry towards high-end,intelligent and green,and also affect the China’s high-quality economic development.To overcome the above development difficulties,the manufacturing industry must achieve green transformation: first,it is necessary to achieve green production,intensive use of factor resources and minimize the generation of waste.Second,it is necessary to achieve high-end and intelligent production,realize independent innovation and lead development,promote the evolution of manufacturing production to a higher form and create a manufacturing industry cluster with global competitiveness.Currently,the booming development of the digital economy based on new generation information technologies such as big data,cloud computing,block chain and artificial intelligence provides new opportunities for the manufacturing industry to achieve green transformation.In 2021,China’s digital economy has formed a large scale,with a total of 45.5 trillion yuan,accounting for 39.8% of GDP.The digital economy takes digital knowledge and information as the core elements,and the rapid development of digital technology can optimize factor allocation,improve ecological efficiency,and fully empower industrial transformation and upgrading.Therefore,improving the digitization level of regions may be a new solution to promote the green transformation of the manufacturing industry.In theory,the important goal of digitization is to improve the level of information and intelligence level of society,improve resource allocation efficiency,and balance the new demands of transformation and innovation with energy conservation and emission reduction in combination with the traditional real economy.The improvement of the digitization level of regions provides convenient infrastructure for manufacturing enterprises,and also promotes the optimization of the allocation of production factors in the production process and pollution control stage,which is conducive to promoting green technology innovation to achieve the greening of production processes and ultimately promote the overall green transformation of the manufacturing industry.From a practical perspective,data from the World Economic Forum show that the application of digital projects such as the Internet,big data,cloud computing,artificial intelligence,and 5G in manufacturing and other industries will reduce global carbon emissions by up to 15%.It can be seen that the realization of the goal of green transformation of the manufacturing industry increasingly depends on the promotion of the digitization level of regions.Unfortunately,the "black box" of the mechanism and impact process of the digitization level of regions on the green transformation of the manufacturing industry has not yet been opened.Based on this,this article deeply explores the mechanism,impact and implementation path of the development of the digital economy on the green transformation of the manufacturing industry,and research shows that:(1)Based on the construction of digital infrastructure,digital industrialization,and digitization of industries,this article explores the construction of an indicator system that can measure the development level of the digital economy from these three dimensions.Using this indicator system to measure the development level of the digital economy in 30 provinces,it was found that the level of the digital economy in the whole country and in the eastern,central,and western regions is gradually improving,with the central and western regions developing faster.However,there are obvious polarization and multi-polarization phenomena in the development process.As time goes by,the differences in the development level of the digital economy among provinces are decreasing year by year,but this trend has slowed down in recent years.(2)Green transformation of manufacturing industry is the practice and specific application of "green economy" in the field of manufacturing industry,emphasizing that manufacturing production should achieve the dual objectives of economic and ecological benefits.As an important part of the green economy,the green transformation of manufacturing requires the manufacturing industry to abandon the traditional development model of "high energy consumption,high emissions,and low efficiency" and move towards a production model of "continuous reduction of energy consumption and recycling,reduction of pollution emissions,gradual reduction of impact on the ecological environment,improvement of labor productivity,and enhancement of sustainable development capacity".Therefore,this article defines the connotation of the green transformation of manufacturing industry as three aspects:reduction of pollution emissions,structural upgrading,and improvement of green total factor productivity.(3)Based on the fact that the development of the digital economy in the Chinese context empowers the manufacturing industry to reduce pollution emissions,this article comprehensively adopts panel data fixed effect model,intermediary effect model,threshold effect model,and other methods to empirically test the impact of the development of the digital economy on the reduction of pollution emissions in the manufacturing industry.The results show that the development of the digital economy can effectively reduce pollution emissions in China’s manufacturing industry,which strongly supports China’s carbon neutrality and peak carbon action.Moreover,this conclusion still holds true after controlling endogeneity issues and conducting robustness tests.Furthermore,this article uses the threshold effect model to test the nonlinear impact of the development of the digital economy on the reduction of pollution emissions in the manufacturing industry.Further research shows that strengthening technological innovation,saving transaction costs and reducing resource mismatch as intermediary variables can exert indirect effects,indicating that in the green development system of manufacturing industry,these three factors can work together with the digital economy to help achieve the goal of carbon neutrality and peak carbon action.(4)This article explores the empowering effect of the development of the digital economy on the structural upgrading of the manufacturing industry using panel data fixed effect model,system GMM method,intermediary effect model,and other methods.Firstly,this article constructs a panel data system GMM model to test the direct impact of the development of the digital economy on the structural upgrading of the manufacturing industry.The results show that the development of the digital economy has a significant promoting effect on the structural upgrading of the manufacturing industry,and this conclusion still holds true after controlling endogeneity and conducting robustness tests.Secondly,this article also conducts heterogeneity tests based on regional and industry technological intensity and finds that the role of the digital economy in the structural upgrading of the manufacturing industry decreases from the eastern-central-western echelon and from high to low according to industry technological intensity.This indicates that the improvement of digital economy infrastructure and the increase of industry technological intensity are conducive to exerting the promoting effect of digital technology in the process of structural upgrading of the manufacturing industry.Furthermore,the development of the digital economy can also have indirect effects on the structural upgrading of the manufacturing industry through reducing transaction costs,strengthening technological innovation and reducing resource mismatch.(5)This article empirically examines the practical effect of digital economy development on the green total factor productivity of the manufacturing industry by constructing a spatial Durbin model,intermediary effect model,and other methods.The development of the digital economy has a spatial spillover effect on the green total factor productivity of the regional manufacturing industry.Ignoring this background will lead to significant bias in evaluating the promoting effect of the development of the digital economy on the green total factor productivity of the manufacturing industry.Using the spatial Durbin model,this article finds that the development of the digital economy not only has a direct promoting effect on the improvement of green total factor productivity but also has indirect effects by strengthening technological progress,saving transaction costs and reducing resource mismatch.Therefore,to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality and peak carbon and high-quality economic development,the digital economy and manufacturing industry should be deeply integrated to promote the transformation of the manufacturing industry towards greenization and digitization,and accelerate the clean production and green development of high energy consumption and high-polluting industries.The innovation of this article lies in: Firstly,based on existing literature,this article attempts to construct a theoretical framework for the direct and indirect effects of the development of the digital economy on the green transformation of the manufacturing industry.On the one hand,most of the existing research on the impact of the development of the digital economy on economic activities,especially the transformation of the manufacturing industry,remains at the level of practical summary,and the theoretical analysis lacks sufficient model support.This article attempts to construct a theoretical model of the impact of the development of the digital economy on the green transformation of the manufacturing industry,to some extent,deepening the theoretical logic of the development of the digital economy promoting the green transformation of the manufacturing industry.On the other hand,based on the practice of the digital economy driving the organizational production transformation and industrial chain restructuring of the manufacturing industry,this article further explores the mechanism by which the development of the digital economy indirectly promotes the green transformation of the manufacturing industry through strengthening enterprise technological innovation,saving transaction costs,and relieving resource mismatches,enriching the theoretical research between the development of the digital economy and the green transformation of the manufacturing industry.Secondly,based on industrial economic theory and the interpretation of building a "modern industrial system",this article endows the green transformation of the manufacturing industry with multidimensional connotations,including the reduction of pollution emissions in the manufacturing industry,the upgrading of the industrial structure,and the improvement of the green total factor productivity of the manufacturing industry.This not only aims to achieve "green" but also requires "transformation",breaking through the limitations of existing research that often choose to examine the green transformation of the manufacturing industry from a single perspective,and exploring the logical relationship between the three dimensions.This article believes that the green transformation of the manufacturing industry should reflect the requirements of the report of “the 20th National Congress of the Communist X Party of China” on building a new development pattern and a modern industrial system,and is committed to promoting the development of the manufacturing industry towards "green","high-end",and "intelligent" directions."Green" reflects the manufacturing industry’s pursuit of economic benefits while paying attention to environmental protection,improving resource factor utilization efficiency and reducing the emission of waste in the production process."High-end" and "intelligent" reflect the pursuit of manufacturing industry to higher industrial form evolution,including promoting technological innovation and improving production efficiency to achieve sustainable development,that is,upgrading the industry structure and improving the green total factor productivity of the manufacturing industry.Thirdly,this article constructs a comprehensive index to measure the level of development of the digital economy from three aspects: digital infrastructure construction,digital industrialization,and industrial digitization,to make up for the shortcomings of the existing measurement methods of the digital economy.Existing research on measuring the development of the digital economy often uses a single indicator,which cannot comprehensively and systematically demonstrate the rich connotation of the development of the digital economy.A few comprehensive indicator system studies have overlooked the important value of measuring digital infrastructure construction.This article believes that digital infrastructure construction is the foundation and prerequisite for digital industrialization and industrial digitization,presenting the "static" aspect of the digital economy,while digital industrialization and industrial digitization are the specific manifestations of the development of the digital economy,which can "dynamically" measure the "development" of the digital economy.Therefore,this article constructs a digital economy development indicator system from three dimensions: digital infrastructure construction,digital industrialization,and industrial digitization,attempting to expand the connotation of the development of the digital economy.Fourthly,this article breaks through the shortcomings of existing literature research methods and sample data.It selects panel data at the provincial,industry,and enterprise levels to empirically test the impact of the development of the digital economy on the green transformation of the manufacturing industry.It applies various empirical models according to the differences in research questions and explores the multilevel heterogeneity impact results,thus improving the accuracy of the research conclusions and obtaining innovative research results.Unlike previous empirical studies that mostly focus on the linear impact of the development of the digital economy on the green transformation of the manufacturing industry,this article believes that there may be a nonlinear impact of the development of the digital economy on the reduction of pollution emissions in the manufacturing industry.Therefore,it uses a threshold effect model to test the possible nonlinear impact.Using the spatial Durbin model,it analyzes the "spatial spillover effect" of the development of the digital economy on the green total factor productivity of the manufacturing industry,expanding the depth of research on the impact of the development of the digital economy on the green total factor productivity of the manufacturing industry.Using the intermediary effect model,it verifies the multidimensional indirect effect mechanism of the development of the digital economy on the green transformation of the manufacturing industry,enriching the mechanism test in the research on the digital economy development promoting the green transformation of the manufacturing industry.