Can the digital economy accelerates China's export technology upgrading? Based on the perspective of export technology complexity.

At present, the global division of labor system has entered a period of accelerated reconstruction. How to use the new generation of digital technology to achieve high-quality development of China's export trade has become the key to promoting the new development pattern of dual circulation at home and abroad. Based on the export technical complexity of 30 provinces in China from 2012 to 2020, this paper uses entropy weight TOPSIS to measure the development level of provincial digital economy, and deeply analyzes the impact and internal mechanism of digital economy on China's export technical complexity. The study found that the digital economy has significantly promoted the upgrading of China's export technology, and this improvement effect is most obvious in the eastern region. But the export quality of the western region has a negative inhibitory effect. From the perspective of the impact mechanism, the digital economy can achieve export technology upgrading by promoting knowledge spillover and accelerating the marketization process. From the perspective of industrial transformation and upgrading, the development of the digital economy accelerates the technological upgrading of export products through the upgrading of industrial structure, but it has no obvious impact on the rationalization of industrial structure. Further tests show that the effect of digital economy on the upgrading of export product quality is more prominent in low-tech industries. The conclusions of this paper provide data support and analysis perspective for exploring the innovative development of trade led by digital economy and enhancing the international competitiveness of China's foreign trade. It provides new ideas for improving the quality of China's high-quality external circulation development under the background of digital economy, and provides policy reference for the organic combination of digital economy development strategy and foreign power strategy. • This study examines how digital economy accelerates China's export technology upgrading. • We measure the digital economy indexes and export technical complexity (EXPY) in China. • The digital economy positively affects EXPY through two dimensions: "knowledge spillover" and "marketization process". • The effect of the digital economy on export technical complexity is heterogeneous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]