Modern Economics & Management Forum

The study employs panel data spanning 30 Chinese provinces, from 2012 to 2020, to assess the comprehensive index reflecting the level of digital economy development in China. Employing fixed effects model, the empirical analysis examines how China's digital economy influences regional economic growth, yielding the following conclusions: (1) The advancement in digital economy development significantly fosters economic growth; (2) Results from regressing the explained variable subdivided into the value-added of three major industries indicate that digital economy exerts the greatest impact on the added value of tertiary industry, followed by primary industry, which has no significant impact on the secondary industry; (3) Heterogeneity analysis reveals regional disparities in the promotion of economic growth by the digital economy, with a more pronounced impact in the central and eastern regions of China compared to the western region of China, where the effect is not significant.