Does digital technology promote the sustainable development of the marine equipment manufacturing industry in China?

Along with the rapid development of information and communication technology, the digital economy has affected all industries and digital trade has become the main way of international trade. This paper adopts an entropy weight method to measure the sustainable development of the Marine Equipment Manufacturing Industry (MEMI), developing an econometric model with the digital trade as a mediating effect to investigate how digital technology promotes the sustainable development of MEMI. After reviewing the sustainable development performance of 11 coastal provinces in China from 2006 to 2016, this paper reveals their regional heterogeneity and shows that digital technology has greatly promoted the sustainable development of China's MEMI. Digital technology has a positive impact on China's MEMI and Digital trade plays a part in the mediating effect. China's MEMI lacks high-end professional and technical personnel in general, but the application of digital technology is unbalanced and inadequate across regions, which is grouped into three echelons. Digital technology is fully developed in the first and second echelon, and digital trade has an obvious mediating effect in the first echelon. In the third echelon, digital technology is applied slowly and the digital trade has produced a masking effect. In light of the position of MEMI in the view of the value chain, the regional authorities should adopt proper policies according to their conditions.