Research On The Path Of Information And Communication Technology Driving China’s High-quality Economic Growth

Since the 1980 s,the rapid development and wide application of information and communication technology(ICT)has led to a new round of global scientific and technological revolution after the agricultural revolution and industrial revolution.The information revolution and digital wave with ICT as the core are deeply affecting all fields of economy and society,and become the key to reshaping the international economy,politics,culture,social,ecological and military development.Facing the new trends and challenges of this new round of scientific and technological revolution,countries all over the world attach great importance to the development of ICT and digital economy.Developed countries represented by the United States,the European Union,Japan and Russia have formulated national strategies and development plans dominated by digital economy.Therefore,how to speed up the construction of a digital country and occupy the commanding height of technology has become a global consensus.Since 2017,China’s economy has shifted from a high-speed growth stage to a new stage of high-quality development.In the face of problems such as the decline of demographic dividend,the decline of capital return,serious overcapacity,intensified energy constraints,prominent environmental pressure and the weakening driving force of external demand,the past extensive growth model driven by factors and investment urgently needs to change to a growth model driven by knowledge and innovation.In 2021,the national 14 th five year plan proposed that China has entered a critical period of building an innovative country and a world power in science and technology,and that the implementation of innovation driven development strategy is an inevitable choice to achieve high-quality development.In addition,China’s digital economy has also made remarkable achievements.Relevant data show that the scale of China’s digital economy has ranked second in the world for many consecutive years,accounting for 38.6% of GDP in 2020,and ranks first in the world in terms of digital infrastructure and digital market scale.Over the past ten years,China has also launched a number of major national strategies to encourage ICT development,such as “Internet plus”,“network power”,“two integration” and “Digital China”.It can be seen that ICT and digital economy are becoming the core support and innovation driving force of China’s economy.From the existing research,there are abundant studies on the impact of ICT on economic aggregate and productivity growth.Some literatures also analyze the role of ICT in industrial structure,technological innovation,technology spillover,organization and management,confirming the contribution of ICT from multiple levels.However,the existing research is more to analyze the growth effect of ICT from a quantitative perspective,and less to analyze its internal innovation mechanism based on the technical attributes and characteristics of ICT,especially the research on the micro basis of the macro effect on ICT is scarce.In addition,China’s economic growth is facing new requirements and objectives in the stage of high-quality development,that is,high-quality economic growth.China’s development concept and economic practice have endowed rich connotation of high-quality economic growth with Chinese characteristics.However,on the one hand,few literatures systematically and comprehensively discuss the meaning of high-quality growth;On the other hand,only a few studies analyze the impact of ICT and related digital technologies on high-quality economic growth from the perspectives of residents’ consumption,entrepreneurship and employment.Therefore,this paper comprehensively combs and summarizes the connotation and characteristics of high-quality economic growth,and analyzes the internal mechanism and realization path of driving high-quality economic growth combined with the characteristics and innovation driving effect of ICT.In this paper,high-quality economic growth is an advanced state of economic growth with scientific and technological innovation driving,improved supply quality,comprehensive and balanced coordination and sustainable development on the basis of stable economic growth.From the definition of high-quality economic growth,technological innovation is the core driving force to promote high-quality growth,while micro enterprises are the main body of scientific and technological innovation,and innovation activities mainly rely on micro enterprises.Therefore,this paper takes improving enterprise independent innovation as the innovation driving path of high-quality growth,and analyzes the impact of ICT on enterprise independent innovation from the micro application level.Secondly,because the development effect at the micro level will be accumulated and amplified,it will eventually be reflected in the improvement of productivity at the macro level.The improvement of macro productivity is the inevitable result of realizing high-quality economic growth.Therefore,this paper takes improving macro productivity as the efficiency improvement path to achieve high-quality economic growth,and analyzes the impact of ICT on China’s labor productivity growth from the macro level.Finally,since sustainable development is the universal goal of high-quality growth,it reflects the harmonious development of economy and natural environment at a higher level.Considering that industrial carbon emissions account for about 70% of China’s total carbon emissions,this paper constructs a sustainable development path for ICT to promote high-quality growth from the perspective of reducing China’s industrial carbon dioxide intensity.To sum up,combined with the connotation of high-quality economic growth and the innovation mechanism of ICT,this paper takes “innovation driving path” →“efficiency improvement path” → “sustainable development path” as the main line,making an in-depth analysis and corresponding empirical test on the path realization of ICT driven high-quality economic growth of China.Around the above research contents,the conclusions are as follows:Firstly,from the innovation driven path of ICT promoting high-quality economic growth,that is,the impact of ICT on enterprises’ independent innovation ability,the theoretical analysis of this paper shows that the technical characteristics of ICT can greatly increase the efficiency and channels for enterprises to obtain information,so as to improve the accumulation and investment level of enterprises’ innovation resources,which is embodied in increasing R&D investment,improving human capital,optimizing the labor skill structure and reducing transaction costs to realize the promoting effect of ICT on independent innovation ability.Based on the theoretical analysis results,this paper further takes the listed companies of Shanghai and Shenzhen A shares in China as the research object for empirical test.The test results show that the ICT investment of enterprises can promote the independent innovation level of enterprises.Among them,ICT enterprises can realize the promotion of ICT investment on independent innovation by improving the R&D level and improving the labor skill structure,while the ICT investment of non ICT enterprises is mainly through reducing transaction costs and improving the agency efficiency to enhance the level of independent innovation.Secondly,from the perspective of the efficiency improvement path of ICT promoting high-quality economic growth,that is,the impact of ICT on China’s labor productivity growth,ICT capital investment at the macro level can directly affect productivity growth by improving the level of capital deepening and the quality of capital factors.At the same time,ICT capital can replace other factors,optimize the factor investment structure and allocation efficiency,and strengthen the efficiency of organization and management,so as to indirectly promote the growth of macro productivity.The empirical test found that the rapid accumulation of ICT capital promoted the growth of China’s labor productivity,but the change of ICT capital internal structure(software hardware capital ratio)inhibited the growth of labor productivity.From the characteristics of the industry,the impact of ICT capital level and ICT capital structure on productivity growth is quite different in industry and service industry.Industries with high ICT capital intensity and rapid growth of human capital can effectively weaken the negative impact of changes in the internal structure of ICT capital on the growth of labor productivity.Finally,from the perspective of the sustainable development path of ICT promoting high-quality economic growth,that is,the impact of ICT on carbon dioxide emission intensity,in theory,ICT presents the intensive characteristics of virtualization and dematerialization,which is conducive to the integration and development of green technologies,can improve the factor flow and allocation efficiency to adjust the industrial structure,and then affect the emission intensity of carbon dioxide.After taking China’s industrial sector as the research sample,it is found that ICT capital investment plays a positive role in reducing industrial carbon intensity.In terms of influencing channels,efficiency progress,especially the improvement of pure technical efficiency,is an important channel for ICT capital investment to reduce industrial carbon intensity.In addition,the impact of ICT capital investment on industrial carbon intensity will have a threshold effect with the changes of ICT capital internal structure,domestic R&D intensity and foreign investment level.Especially,the carbon emission reduction effect of software will increase with the improvement of R&D intensity and foreign investment level.Compared with the existing research,the innovation of this paper lies in:First,this paper clearly defines the connotation and characteristics of highquality economic growth as: an advanced state of economic growth with scientific and technological innovation as the core driving force,quality improvement as the basic means,coordination and unity as the internal requirement and sustainable development as the universal goal.From the existing literature,the concept of highquality economic growth has been used,but its connotation is lack of detailed definition and specific analysis.Combined with economic theory and the realistic background of China’s economic practice,this paper clearly and comprehensively analyzes the definition of high-quality economic growth,which lays a foundation for the study of economic growth in the stage of high-quality development.Second,this paper expands the theoretical and practical research on ICT driven high-quality economic growth in China.Most of the existing studies on the growth effect of ICT focus on the quantitative characteristics of economic growth,while this paper focuses on the qualitative characteristics of economic growth,and brings the input of production factors and technological innovation into the same analysis framework.At the same time,this paper focuses on the realization paths of highquality economic growth at different levels,and explores the impact and mechanism of ICT on different paths of high-quality economic growth,which makes up for the lack of practical research on the impact of ICT on high-quality economic growth.Thirdly,this paper constructs a systematic theoretical analysis framework of the impact of ICT on high-quality economic growth.For the connotation of highquality economic growth,this paper systematically summarizes and discusses it from three aspects: growth kinetic energy,growth process and growth goal.In terms of ICT innovation diffusion mechanism,combined with the technical characteristics of ICT,this paper makes a systematic exploration from the micro technical level,industrial driving level and social development level.In terms of the realization path of ICT promoting high-quality economic growth,this paper also makes a systematic analysis from the aspects of micro enterprise innovation,macro efficiency performance and sustainable development.