Divergence in Empowerment:Digital Technology Diffusion Divergence and the Imbalance between Chinese North and South Economic Growth
The economic growth disparity between China's northern and southern regions has become a critical topic in examining the country's uneven regional development and underlying social tensions in the modern era.Addressing this imbalance requires a new strategic approach to regional coordination,with technology diffusion playing a central role in fostering economic growth across developing countries.Specifically,digital technology diffusion has proven essential for promoting coordinated regional economic growth.Despite its significance,limited research has focused on China's North-South economic imbalance through the perspective of digital technology diffusion,particularly on the reasons why northern provinces lag behind southern ones within the national development framework.This study analyzes data on Chinese patent grants from 2007 to 2019 to measure digital technology diffusion and its provincial variations,examining the effects of these differences on the North-South economic growth divide in China.The findings reveal that disparities in digital technology diffusion significantly contribute to this imbalance,affecting human capital accumulation,industrial upgrading,and market expansion unevenly across regions.The mechanisms behind these regional discrepancies include differences in market incentives,informatization levels,high-tech industry growth,service sector agglomeration,population mobility,and demographic composition.These factors collectively influence the regional variance in digital technology diffusion.The regression results remain robust,accounting for total economic size,per capita indicators,development quality,endogeneity,and measurement errors.This paper makes three main contributions to the literature.First,it establishes an innovative link between digital technology diffusion and regional economic growth disparities,providing a quantitative analysis of how these diffusion differences influence the North-South economic growth gap in China.Second,it integrates digital technology diffusion and regional economic disparity into a cohesive analytical framework,offering a new theoretical perspective on coordinated regional development.Third,it constructs provincial-level indicators of digital technology diffusion using microenterprise data,presenting a macro-level reference point for future research on digital technology diffusion.In summary,this paper offers a novel interpretation of the North-South economic growth disparity within the context of the digital economy,suggesting strategic government measures to foster regional development through digital technology optimization and providing valuable insights for advancing the digital economy.
digital technology diffusioneconomic growthNorth-South divisionregional disparityregional coordinated development
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