This paper systematically explores the dynamic effects of foreign direct investment (FDI), foreign trade, technological innovation, and human capital across China’s 28 sub-industries. The results show that FDI and foreign trade significantly promote manufacturing output growth, while technological innovation and human capital have a more sensitive response to growth fluctuations in the short term. The Granger causality test shows that FDI, technological innovation, and human capital all have strong predictive power and can effectively predict the future trend of manufacturing output. The impulse response function and variance decomposition analysis further reveal the key role of these factors in promoting the manufacturing industry’s long-term sustainable development. Based on the above findings, this paper suggests that local government should continue to optimize the structure and quality of attracting foreign capital, increase the support for technology research and development and intelligent manufacturing, enhance the added value of export products, and strengthen human capital investment so as to promote China’s manufacturing industry’s high-quality and sustainable development and provide reference for other developing countries’ manufacturing development.

Under the rapid development of the digital economy, the interactive relationship between exports and the digital economy has become an important issue for promoting regional economic growth. Based on the panel data of 31 provinces and municipalities in China from 2012 to 2022, this paper systematically examines the impact of exports on economic growth and the moderating role of the digital economy, and it introduces research and development (R&D) investment to test its mediating mechanism. The research finds that exports significantly promote regional economic growth. The digital economy has a negative moderating effect on the export growth effect, and it is significant in the eastern region but not significant in the central and western regions, showing obvious regional heterogeneity. R&D investment has played a partial mediating role between exports and economic growth. This paper suggests that the government should focus on regional differences, promote the deep integration of the digital economy and exports, enhance technological innovation capabilities, formulate differentiated policies based on local conditions, strengthen the construction of digital infrastructure, optimize the export structure, support the development of R&D-driven enterprises, and build a digital export system that promotes regional coordination and high-quality growth, so as to achieve high-quality coordinated sustainable regional development. This paper also has certain reference value for other developing economies, in promoting the integration of the digital economy and trade.

In the context of China’s regional development imbalance and transformation toward innovation-driven growth, understanding how foreign direct investment (FDI), trade, and innovation jointly influence regional economies has become a pressing issue. This study focuses on Western China, a region crucial to the national strategy for coordinated development yet often underrepresented in empirical research. Using provincial-level panel data from 12 western provinces from 2001 to 2022, a panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) model is employed to examine the dynamic relationships among FDI, exports, imports, research and development (R&D) investment, human capital, and economic growth. The results indicate that FDI and exports exert significant and persistent positive effects on regional economic growth, while imports and R&D investment contribute indirectly by promoting technological progress and enhancing competitiveness. Human capital also supports growth with a time lag, reflecting its cumulative nature. The findings provide empirical support for endogenous growth and global value chain theories, revealing that innovation and trade are key transmission channels of regional growth. This study contributes to the understanding of regional dynamic mechanisms and offers practical policy implications for promoting high-quality FDI, strengthening innovation, and developing human capital to achieve sustainable and inclusive growth in Western China, and provides useful reference for other developing countries and regions.

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