Relevance Analysis of China’s Digital Industry

Abstract

Currently, the digital economy has emerged as a crucial force reshaping the global competitive landscape. This study aims to comprehensively explore the extent and economic significance of the digital industry. By utilizing existing national input–output tables, an input–output sequence table for the digital industry spanning from 2012 to 2020 was constructed. Through the application of input–output analysis and complex network methods, the study analyzed the interdependent effects of the digital industry and examined the structured characteristics of the industry network. The results indicate the following: (1) The core sectors of the digital industry primarily rely on the secondary industry as a foundation, utilizing its resources to drive their development. Simultaneously, these core sectors provide support to the tertiary industry, facilitating its transformation and upgrade. (2) The digital industry plays a role as a backward-linkage sector within the industrial chain, acting as an intermediate demand-driven industry that propels the transformation and growth of other industries. (3) China’s industrial network exhibits characteristics of both scale-free and small-world networks, featuring an uneven connectivity among industry nodes. (4) The digital foundational sectors are at the periphery of the network and have not developed a core advantage. The digital core sectors have not yet become the leading industries, but they have emerged as pivotal departments within the industry system, indicating the growing dominance of the digital industry in the overall economy.