Study On The Impact Of Digital Economy On China’s Export Competitiveness

As a country with a large population,China has seized the opportunity to achieve tremendous economic development in terms of exports with the demographic dividend since its reform and opening up.However,this comparative advantage of China has slowly disappeared with the progress of science and technology,accompanied by the adoption of low labor cost strategy by countries represented by India to join the ranks of international trade,and our exporters are also constrained by certain Western countries in some key technology areas.In this complex background,the improvement of China’s export competitiveness has encountered obstacles,and the growth of export trade is facing the rotation of "old and new driving force".Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020,digital economy has shown great vitality,which has weakened the impact of COVID-19 on our economy.In the process of the integration of digital technology and real economy,data,a new factor of production,has fully displayed its great value,which can not only provide convenient services for the people,but also help enterprises improve the efficiency of production management.It has endowed various industries with energy,promoted the improvement of industrial efficiency,and injected new impetus for the upgrading of our country’s industrial structure.Under the background of this new era,digital economy has become the "new driving force" for the transformation and upgrading of China’s export trade and the improvement of export competitiveness.Based on the above background,this thesis links the digital economy and export competitiveness to explore the impact of digital economy on China’s export competitiveness,and the research content is relatively rich.Firstly,this thesis defines the connotation of digital economy and export competitiveness by combing relevant literature.Then it analyzes the development status of digital economy and export competitiveness.Based on cutting-edge research in the field of digital economy,relevant indicators of digital economy are innovatively selected to build a measurement system of digital economy.The measurement system includes3 dimensions of digital economy,8 sub-indicators and 30 basic indicators.And based on the sample data of 31 provinces in the mainland,the entropy method is used to measure the final results,so as to ensure that the measurement results can comprehensively reflect the development level of China’s digital economy.The measurement of export competitiveness refers to the practice recognized by the academic circle,adopts the measurement method that can reflect the regional level of export competitiveness,and the calculation results are in line with the reality.Secondly,based on relevant theories,this thesis puts forward three action mechanisms of digital economy affecting export competitiveness,which are industrial structure upgrading mechanism,human capital mechanism and innovation output mechanism.And the use of industrial structure upgrading and innovation output as mediating variables to explore the impact of digital economy on export competitiveness is also an innovative perspective of this thesis,which is currently little studied in academia.In the empirical test part,the main models used in this thesis are fixed effects regression model,mediated effects model,and threshold effects model,and in conducting the empirical test,this thesis has the following findings:(1)The digital economy can significantly promote the improvement of China’s export competitiveness.Among the internal components of the digital economy,the development environment of the digital economy industry,the level of digital industrialization and the digitization of the service industry have a more obvious role in promoting export competitiveness,and the role of the digital economy in improving export competitiveness is regionally heterogeneous,with the greatest role in improving export competitiveness in the central region,followed by the eastern region and slightly weaker in the western region.(2)When the proportion of import trade is taken as the threshold variable,it is found that the contribution of digital economy to export competitiveness has a single threshold effect at the national level and in the eastern region,while it has a double threshold effect in the central and western regions.The test results show that with the increase of the proportion of import trade,the enhancement effect of digital economy on export competitiveness of each region gradually weakens.(3)When testing the three mechanisms of the digital economy affecting export competitiveness,industrial structure upgrading,human capital,and innovation output all pass the test of the mediating effect model,among which the mechanism of industrial structure upgrading and the mechanism of innovation output can have a greater promotion effect on the improvement of export competitiveness.Finally,on the basis of theoretical and empirical research,this thesis puts forward five relevant policy recommendations,which are:(1)Promote the process of industrial digitization and digital industrialization to change the "driving force" for the growth of export trade;(2)Optimize the development environment of digital economy industry and strengthen the backing support for export trade competition;(3)Improve the innovation mechanism and optimize the innovation environment to improve the output of innovation;(4)Coordinate the development of digital economy in all regions and bridge the "digital divide"(5)Strengthen the research and development of digital technology and strengthen the digital key capabilities.