Spatiotemporal Distribution and Regional Imbalance of China's Digital Economy

The digital economy is an important driving force for promoting national economic growth and achieving high-quality economic transformation, and is a key force in achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs). This paper measures the digital economy development level of 30 provinces in China from 2013 to 2021 utilizing the entropy of weighting approach, and in order to further reveal its intrinsic laws and differences, it uses three-dimensional kernel density analysis, the Dagum Gini coefficient, spatial autocorrelation analysis, and cold hot spot analysis to explore the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics of the digital economy and its regional imbalance. The empirical results show that <Circled Digit One> China's digital economy has been steadily increasing, spatially showing the characteristics of gradual decrease from east to west and from coast to inland, with obvious spatial agglomeration characteristics and an increasing trend. <Circled Digit Two> There are obvious regional imbalances in the digital economy, with the southeast coastal region leading significantly. <Circled Digit Three> The overall regional differences are large but reduced, mainly from intra-regional differences, the and inter-regional contribution is low. The research in this paper provides data support for revealing the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics of digital economic development and provides new path support for the balanced development of China's regional digital economy.