The Digital Economy,Technological Innovation And Upgrading Of The Global Value Chain

Over the past 40 years of reform and opening up,China has adhered to deepening reform and opening up,actively integrated into the global economic and trade system,and made excellent achievements.However,as a big trading country,China is facing the dilemma of "big but not strong".On the one hand,the trade structure of China is unbalanced.Goods trade accounts for most of the total value of import and export,while the share of service trade with high value-added is less than 20%,which indicates that China mainly undertakes low-value-added tasks such as production,processing and manufacturing in international trade,and is still in a low position in the global value chain;On the other hand,the export of basic manufacturing products is dominated,and the high-precision products and parts involving core technologies still mainly rely on import.And the manufacturing industry has a weak ability of self-innovation.In order to cultivate China’s export competitiveness,it is imperative to promote the upgrading of manufacturing industry in the global value chain,which is not only an inevitable requirement for building a large manufacturing and trading country,but also an important guarantee for promoting the pattern of "dual circulation" and boosting the development of high quality.As a new economic form integrating digital technology and real industry,digital economy has flourished in recent years and has become an important force supporting China’s high-quality development.It has become one of the important topics to find the way to stimulate the vitality of digital economy,create new advantages and promote the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry.Therefore,starting from digital economy,this paper try to explore the impact and mechanism of the level of digital economy on the upgrading of enterprise in global value chain.By constructing an empirical analysis framework and using the data from China’s industrial enterprise database,China customs trade statistics,and the provincial statistical yearbooks,this paper investigates the impact of the digital economy on the upgrading of enterprises in the global value chain and tests the mechanism between them.It is found that the improvement of the development level of the digital economy can significantly promote the enterprises’ upgrading in the global value chain.And the conclusion is still valid after considering the possible endogenous problems.Technological innovation plays an important intermediary role in this process.In addition,the results of heterogeneity analysis show that the promotion effect of digital economy on the upgrading of enterprises in the global value chain varies with the types of trade,ownership and factor intensity.Based on the results and current development of China,this paper puts forward policy suggestions as follows.First,adhere to deepen the development of the digital economy,accelerate the construction of new infrastructure,strengthen policy and financial support for the digital economy,speed the digital industrialization and industrial digitization,promote the in-depth integration of the digital economy and the real economy,to cultivate a strong driving force for the domestic circulation;Second,adhere to the implementation of the innovation driven development strategy,accelerate the tackling of key core technologies,and link up the whole chain of innovation.Finally,adhere to the deep-seated and high-level opening-up,seize the new opportunities for the development of the global value chain brought by the wave of the digital revolution,promote the service-oriented manufacturing industry and the high-end value chain,improve the status and profitability of enterprises in global value chain,and realize the new pattern of development.