From Manufacturing to Smart Manufacturing: Enterprise Digitalization and Export Product Quality

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Enhancing export product quality is critical for countries to evolve from large to strong trading nations, with digital technology-driven changes increasingly acting as a key engine for global foreign trade development. Drawing on multisource heterogeneous data from Chinese listed enterprises and customs between 2001 and 2015, this investigation examines how digitalization influences the caliber of exported products. Our findings demonstrate that firm digitalization increases the quality of China’s exported products through cost reduction, R&D promotion, and the alleviation of financing constraint effects. Moreover, while enhancing quality, digitalization enables rational price reductions, increasing firms’ export volume and profitability. Digitalization also involves a significant bias in quality enhancement, particularly in terms of favoring differentiated goods, general trade exports, and exports to developing countries. This study clarifies the behavioral mechanisms of microenterprises under digitalization and provides an empirical basis for achieving trade power status via digital pathways.