Measuring China's urban digital economy

Digital economy is the core driver of high-quality economic development. How to evaluate the development of the digital economy reasonably and scientifically has become a top priority. Taking 278 prefecture-level cities in the Chinese Mainland from 2010 to 2020 as the research subject, this paper first constructs the digital economy indicator system of Chinese cities from four dimensions: digital industry, digital users, digital innovation, and digital platforms. Then, this paper adopts the gray-target entropy weight method to calculate the digital economy index and sub-indexes of Chinese cities. Finally, this paper analyzes the development of China's urban digital economy from the statistical characteristics and development trends of the index and sub-indexes. The results show that China's urban digital economy and the four dimensions, have experienced stable development from 2010 to 2020, but there is regional heterogeneity. This is mainly reflected in the differences in the development speed of different cities in these dimensions, making the gap among different cities expanding year by year. Additionally, from the perspective of city types, central cities have unique advantages in the development of digital economy, taking a leading position in all dimensions of the digital economy, while non-central cities have great potential for developing digital economy.