Empirical Study on Digital Economy Enabling High-Quality Development of Manufacturing Industry: Taking the Yangtze River Economic Belt as an Example

The rapid development of the digital economy provides an important impetus for the high-quality development of China's manufacturing industry. Using panel data from the Yangtze River Economic Belt, this paper measures the level of development of the digital economy and the manufacturing industry, and analyses the relationship between them. It is found that although the digital economy and the manufacturing industry as a whole show a growth trend, the regional development is unbalanced. The digital economy can obviously promote the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry, but there are also negative spatial spillover effects, and the growth of the digital economy in one region may crowd out the space for the development of the manufacturing industry in neighbouring regions.