In the era of the general downturn of the world economy, regional conflicts are frequent, trade frictions are intensified, and the vulnerability of the global value chain (GVC) is fully exposed. With the in-depth development of the value chain trade model, the digital economy penetrates the whole industrial chain, reshapes the pattern of international trade division, and provides the possibility to ensure the efficiency and security of the value chain simultaneously. China's digital industry has developed rapidly and has made outstanding contributions in the world. It is bound to become a focus for China to maintain its hard-won position in the GVC and cope with the impact of complex international trade. However, few studies analyze the development of digital industry and the resilience of GVC in the same framework, and the transmission mechanism needs to be explored.
Using the China Industrial Enterprise Database, China Customs Import and Export Database, and regional data, this paper calculates the resilience of Chinese enterprises in the GVC and systematically examines the effect and micro-mechanism of the development of the digital industry on the GVC resilience of manufacturing enterprises. The results show that the development of digital industry significantly improves the resilience of the GVC of enterprises. After alleviating the endogeneity problem and replacing the variable measurement method and regression model, the conclusion remains robust. Mechanism analysis shows that the development of digital industry stabilizes the division in the GVC by promoting the integration of the domestic industrial chain and increasing the types of domestic intermediate goods. The resilience enhancement effect is heterogeneous among the digital industry characteristics, industries, and enterprises. The digital industry has a stronger promoting effect on the resilience of the GVC under the development characteristics of high industrial proportion and high agglomeration level. The development of digital industry has a more significant impact on capital- and technology-intensive industries versus high-concentration industries, as well as private enterprises and general trade enterprises. Further analysis shows that the realization of trade mode transformation, intermediate goods import substitution, and information cost reduction have an apparent positive moderating effect on the resilience improvement result of the digital industry.
Compared with previous literature, the main marginal contributions of this paper lies in the following aspects. On the one hand, it verifies the important role of developing the digital industry in stabilizing the international competitive position and expands literature on the influencing factors of GVC status and resilience. On the other hand, this paper uses detailed micro-level data to conduct heterogeneity investigation at the regional, industrial and enterprise levels, and explores specific transmission paths and moderating methods, providing micro evidence for realizing the stability of the value chain position.
This paper has implications for coping with the turbulent international environment based on the digital economy. It is helpful for policy-making departments to introduce guiding measures, fully stimulate the vitality of economic entities, promote the digital transformation of industrial structure, and strengthen the effective influence of the domestic intermediate product market and domestic industrial chain. Using the advantages of the digital industry, it contributes Chinese experience to the realization of GVC adversity catch-up.