数字经济已成为中国经济增长的新引擎，准确把握中国数字经济产业时空格局及演变规律，对于完善数字经济协同发展格局具有重要意义。利用EG指数、标准差椭圆方法、σ收敛与β收敛模型，使用2013—2021年中国数字经济产业分行业数据考察中国数字经济产业时空格局和演变趋势，并结合空间效应检验其收敛特征。研究发现：①中国数字经济产业整体呈多极分布状态，空间态势表现为由沿海向内陆逐级递减，空间集聚程度中等且呈现出微弱发散趋势，分布重心趋于南移；②数字经济细分行业集聚与发散趋势并存，其中数字产品制造业主要表现为向川渝、贵州等西南省份迁移，数字产品服务业、数字技术应用业等资本、技术密集型行业则进一步向东南沿海集聚；③全国范围内数字经济产业发展不存在明显σ收敛，但具有显著的绝对β收敛和条件β收敛特征，即欠发达地区表现出较强增长趋势。经济发展水平、技术创新、经济开放度、数字基础设施等因素对中国数字经济产业收敛存在不同程度的促进作用，且能够放大数字经济产业发展对周边地区的空间溢出效应。

China′s digital economy industry has been expanding in scale and depth, with a strong promotion effect on economic growth. However, due to practical differences in economic foundation, factor endowment, geographical location, and other aspects, China′s digital economy during its high-speed growth,implies the development of an uneven, homogenized path of structural problems. The trend of a "digital divide" between regions, industries and groups is becoming more and more obvious. Uneven regional development of the digital economy has a negative impact on the coordinated development of the regional economy, and the relationship between regional disparities and the "digital divide" has an accelerating tendency to fall into a "vicious circle" under the effect of the siphon effect, resulting in widening the economic gap and deepening the old irrational contradictions of the original pattern of regional economic development. These issues raise the questions of how the spatial and temporal distribution pattern and evolution trend of China′s digital economy industry and its subsectors are evolving at this stage, and what kind of spatial convergence characteristics exist. The scientific answers to the above questions are of great practical significance for the comprehensive understanding of the spatial differences and regional connections in the development of China′s digital economy industry.
Using the EG index, standard deviation ellipse method, and σ-convergence and β-convergence models, this study examines the spatio-temporal pattern and evolutionary trend of China′s digital economy industry using sub-industry data of China′s digital economy industry for the period of 2013-2021, and tests the convergence characteristics in conjunction with spatial effects. The research finds that China′s digital economy industry as a whole is in multi-polar distribution, the spatial trend is decreasing step by step from the coast to the inland , the spatial agglomeration degree is medium and shows a weak trend of dispersion, the center of gravity of the distribution tends to move to the south; digital economy industry segments coexist in both agglomeration and dispersion trend, in which the digital product manufacturing industry is mainly manifested in the migration to the southwestern provinces of Sichuan-Chongqing and Guizhou, while the digital product service industry, the digital technology application industry, and other capital and technology-intensive industries are further clustered to the southeast coast; there is no obvious σ-convergence in the development of digital economy industry nationwide, but it is characterized by significant absolute β-convergence and conditional β-convergence, i.e., the less developed regions show a stronger growth trend. Factors such as the level of economic development, technological innovation, economic openness, and digital infrastructure have different degrees of facilitating effects on the convergence of China′s digital economy industry, and can amplify the spatial spillover effect of digital economy industry development on neighboring regions.
Compared with the existing literature that mostly measure the level of the digital economy through the construction of the indicator system, and fail to comprehensively reflect the connotation of the digital economy industry, this paper defines the scope of digital economy industries based on the "Statistical Classification of the Digital Economy and its Core Industries (2021)", which profoundly responds to the connotation of digital industrialization and industrial digitization, enriches the relevant research on the quantitative assessment of the digital economy industries, and also provides a useful supplement to the in-depth understanding of the characteristics of the internal differences of China′s digital economy industries; besides, existing studies usually ignore the potential impact of spatial effects on the dynamic evolution of China′s digital economy industry development, and lack a systematic exploration of the spatial convergence characteristics of China′s digital economy industry development and its influencing factors. This paper, however, introduces a variety of spatial analytical methods, such as the EG index, standard deviation ellipse, spatial autocorrelation and other spatial analytical methods, to explore the spatio-temporal pattern and the law of evolution of China′s digital economy industry; its spatial convergence characteristics are analyzed by the σ-convergence and β-convergence models, which provides empirical reference for revealing the trend of the dynamic evolution of the development of China′s digital economy industry and its intrinsic laws and promoting the regional coordination development of the digital economy.