The Impact Of Digitization On China’s Furniture Manufacturing Exports

The new generation of information technologies such as the Internet of Things,artificial intelligence and blockchain develop rapidly,which is beneficial for providing supportive services for the improvement of production efficiency and the optimization of industrial structure in traditional economic activities.Its definition has gradually changed from digital industrialization in a narrow sense to industrial digitalization in a broad sense.At the same time,a new round of technological and industrial revolution brought by digital development has promoted the deep integration of information network technology and manufacturing,which has had a profound impact on manufacturing around the world.At present,the return of manufacturing industries in developed countries and the rising labor costs in China have had a huge impact on the export of traditional Chinese manufacturing industries represented by the furniture industry.It is necessary for us to make full use of the empowering and leading role of digital technology in the furniture manufacturing industry,so that it can better cope with changes in the international market situation.Relevant studies have found that digital knowledge,information transmission and trading and other productive services have brought a huge impetus to the development of my country’s furniture manufacturing industry and promoted the expansion of the industry’s export scale.However,existing research on the impact of digitalization on the export of Chinese furniture manufacturing industry mainly focuses on the theoretical level,and the analysis from an empirical perspective needs to be improved.Therefore,this thesis starts from the perspective of the era of digital development,based on a detailed analysis of the digital development level of Chinese cities and the status of furniture manufacturing exports,and builds a doubledifference model based on a counterfactual analysis framework to further explore the impact of digitalization on Chinese furniture manufacturing exports.The main conclusions are as follows.Firstly,the current digitalization process in China has shifted from the initial stage of slow development to the rapid development,and the differences in the degree of digitalization between regions are obvious,showing the imbalanced characteristics of "the east is strong and the west is weak,and the south is strong and the north is weak".Among them,the southeastern coastal provinces and cities with a relatively high degree of digital development have gradually driven the digital development of the central region.In the western region,except for Sichuan Province,where the level of digital development has caught up,the digital level of other provinces,cities and regions are relatively backward.From the perspective of a single city,half of the top ten cities in the country’s digital development level are located in Guangdong Province;among the municipalities directly under the Central Government,Beijing and Shanghai have a relatively high degree of digital development.Secondly,Chinese furniture exports are mainly HS9401,HS9402 and HS9403 three types of products,the overall export maintained a trend of rapid growth,with a slight decline in 2016.Chinese furniture industry has obvious industrial agglomeration characteristics and regional distribution differences.The development status of the five furniture industry clusters is different.At present,furniture exports are still dominated by the Pearl River Delta furniture industry cluster centered on Guangzhou and Shenzhen and the Yangtze River Delta furniture industry cluster centered on Shanghai,Zhejiang and Jiangsu.Thirdly,this thesis selects the digital development policy of "smart city" pilot construction as an exogenous policy impact,and conducts a benchmark analysis based on the double-difference(DID)method to find that digitalization has a significant positive impact on the export of Chinese furniture manufacturing.The expansion analysis based on regional heterogeneity found that in cities in the eastern and central regions with a better digital foundation,central cities with higher administrative levels,and third-tier cities with higher development levels,the "smart city" pilot policy can better promote local furniture manufacturing exports.From the perspective of export trade,it is found that the "smart city" pilot policy can better promote the export of furniture products of processing trade enterprises,but has not yet promoted the transformation of Chinese furniture manufacturing industry from processing trade to general trade.In addition,this thesis adopts a two-way fixed-effects panel model,and uses the Chinese urban digital comprehensive development index calculated by the entropy method as the core explanatory variable to robustly evaluate the positive impact of digitalization on Chinese furniture manufacturing exports.Based on the above discussion,this thesis puts forward the following suggestions for the export of Chinese furniture manufacturing industry based on the background of digital development.Firstly,it is necessary to promote coordinated regional development of digitalization,narrow regional disparities,improve the supply and balance of supporting resources,give full play to the effect of radiation promotion from central cities to surrounding cities,and lead regional digital development.Secondly,attach importance to the implementation of digital pilot policies,realize pilot cities,advance digital development in batches,and drive regions to achieve common digital development.Thirdly,on the basis of maintaining the continuous expansion of export scale,the furniture industry should also make full use of digital technology to improve product quality,get rid of marketing methods of lowprice competition,and realize product diversification through independent innovation to meet diverse market needs.Fourthly,the introduction of digital technology and high-end talents will become a new driving force for the development of Chinese furniture manufacturing industry in the future.Furniture companies with a higher degree of digitalization in production and marketing will gain more digital dividends and occupy more domestic and international market shares.Fifthly,furniture enterprises should make full use of the effect of industrial agglomeration and realize the linkage development of upstream and downstream industries.The epidemic has put a serious impact on the global furniture supply chain,causing insufficient supply of raw materials in furniture production.China should improve the independent supply capacity of relevant raw materials in the furniture industry and enhance the independent controllability of the furniture industry chain.