Does digital infrastructure promote China’s digital services exports?

As the core supporting system in the digital economy era, how can digital infrastructure promote digital services export? Employing the entropy method to quantify digital infrastructure development, this study constructs an extended gravity model and empirically examines how digital infrastructure affects China’s digital services exports and the underlying mechanisms. The results reveal that digital infrastructure improvement significantly boosts China’s digital services exports, operating by enhancing export sophistication, increasing export product diversification and reducing trade costs. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that digital infrastructure increases Chinese exports when trading with partners characterized by a relatively small digital divide, geographic proximity, cultural similarity, and higher institutional quality. Furthermore, new digital infrastructure outperforms traditional digital infrastructure in promoting China’s digital services exports. This study demonstrates that digital infrastructure is a key driver of digital trade, providing insights to expand China’s digital services exports by strengthening digital infrastructure construction and connectivity with key partners.