2.2. The Theoretical Logic of Economic Resilience Enabled by Digital Finance
(1) Whether digital finance promotes governance?
Early literature has gradually focused on the relationship between “Digital finance”, and “Economic resilience”. Existing studies has proved that digital finance can play the role of “Economic stabilizer” to a certain extent, direct empowerment of economic resilience, embodied in the incremental effect, the effect of structural adjustment and the effect of monetary policy transmission [
15]. Firstly, digital finance has an “Incremental supplement” effect. Digital Finance makes up for the deficiency of traditional finance. With the penetration of digital power in the world, the combination of various digital technologies with financial industry promotes the development of digital finance, it plays an increasingly prominent role in increasing the amount of loanable funds avai-lable to enterprises and individuals, reducing financial costs, broadening the coverage of financial services, lowering the threshold of access to financial services, and widening the channels of capital supply for financial institutions [
16]. The inclusive and sharing performance of digital finance can better realize the sinking and diversification of service objects, expand the financial availability of vulnerable groups and ease the li-quidity constraints, the long tail population will have greater economic effects [
17]. On the other hand, it not only reduces the financial cost of transtemporal transactions between financial institutions, enterprises and individuals, but also breaks the boundary of traditional financial services and lowers the threshold of access to digital financial services, thus the possibility of obtaining financial resources has been raised, the phe-nomenon of financial exclusion has been alleviated, the quality of service has been improved obviously, and the degree of financial service convenience has been enhanced continuously. Secondly, digital finance has the effect of“Structural adjustment”[
18]. The development of digital finance has eased the financing constraints of small and medium-sized enterprises and, to a certain extent, the structural imbalance of the financial system, making China's financial development gradually enter the financial stage in Inclusive [
19]. Digital finance can also alleviate the financing constraint of industrial transforma-tion and upgrading through the effects of technological progress and economies of scale, and contribute to employment and entrepreneurship, and promote the continuous optimization and upgrading of industrial structure, to achieve the improvement of economic resilience [
20]. The combination of digital technology and finance reduces the relevant costs of financial institutions, and the improvement of financial service reaching ability and the lowering of service threshold can greatly expand the range of customers of financial institutions, this has led to the optimization of the capital allocation structure and the improvement of the efficiency of capital allocation, thus improving the economic structure and thus enhancing the economic resilience [
21]. Digital finance will accelerate the flow of information in capital markets to meet the needs of enterprises for access to capital, improve the efficiency of market resource allocation to allow more efficient flow of capital into innovation, and provide a convenient platform for information exchange, to stimulate diversified demand on both sides of the money supply and demand. Through these paths, financial agglomeration can provide effective financial support for the development of market economy, help to improve market structure, enhance eco-nomic strength, and thus enhance economic resilience [
22]. Furthermore, digital finance has “Monetary policy transmission” effect. Some scholars discuss the influence of digital finance on economic fluctuation from the transmission effect of digital finance on monetary policy, and think that digital finance can affect monetary policy through interest rate channel and credit channel, and thereby stabilize the broader economy [
23], greatly enhance the effectiveness of monetary policy and lay a solid foundation for the Macroeconomic regulation and control of counter-cyclical policies in China, which helps to reduce the scope of economic fluctuation, promote the smooth operation of the economy and enhance the economic resilience [
24].
However, digital finance has brought serious challenges to China's financial gover-nance and supervision. Qualitative changes and innovations in the world of digital finance have brought unprecedented risks, as exemplified by the issuance of digital currencies such as ICOs. Based on blockchain technology and digital currency system [
25]. ICO is an activity in which mainstream digital assets such as bitcoin and ether are raised by blockchain startups or ICO project leaders to raise funds by issuing initial cryptocurrencies (called tokens before large-scale circulation) and exchanging tokens with mainstream digital currencies such as bitcoin [
26]. ICO model brought technical defects, capital security problems, the deterioration of market speculation, difficult to be effectively regulated and other huge risks, and even suspected of illegal absorption of public deposits and illegal business and other criminal activities, suspected of money laundering and other criminal activities to provide tools, which on the national economic security and stability has brought unexpected fierce impact [
27]. Due to the huge risks and chaotic industry status quo, Chinese regulators had to intervene in ICO, and the People's Bank of China and seven other departments jointly issued the Announcement on Preventing the Risk of Token Issuance Financing on September 4, 2017 (hereinafter referred to as the "Announcement") [
28]. It has temporarily suspended all ICO projects and defined ICO projects as unauthorized illegal financing activities, requiring that ICOs that have been conducted should make liquidation arrangements to protect investors' rights and interests, and banning trading platforms and financial institutions from engaging in related activities [
29]. In conclusion, once the development of digital finance is out of control, it will also bring a heavy blow to national economic stability and government governance.
With the globalization of world finance and the wide application of financial tech-nology, China's current financial industry has formed a complete financial system, including banking, securities, insurance, funds and other fields, and the degree of marketization and openness of the financial industry has gradually deepened, but it shows very obvious regional differences: On the whole, the level of regional financial development in the country presents a ladder distribution of "east-middle-west", especially the western financial development is relatively lagging behind. In 2022, China's economy was stable on the whole. In terms of GDP, the eastern, central, western and northeastern regions accounted for 51.7%, 22.1%, 21.4% and 4.8% respectively, total social financing increased by 668.9 billion yuan over the previous year, and outstanding loans in local and foreign currencies increased by 10.4% at the end of the year. The proportion of the central and western economies increased over the previous year. The reason is closely related to the economic stabilization package and follow-up measures implemented by the state in various regions. As early as 2021, “the No. 1 Central docu-ment” for the first time explicitly proposed to "develop rural digital inclusive finance, support modern agricultural facilities and rural construction", provide state support for the development of digital inclusive finance, promote financial inclusion, assist financial institutions in risk management, strengthen the credit awareness of capital demanders, assist in financing selection through information integration analysis [
30], fully achieve the positive effect of science and technology in the construction of the financial market and promote the "last mile" work of financial services, so as to help underdeveloped regions achieve common prosperity. By 2022, China's "Government Work Report" has also clearly put forward the policy directive of "new financial tasks" to play the role of development and policy finance, optimize financial services and products, and promote the development of innovation and venture capital in order to explore the overall safe development path of the national economy. Under the guidance of national policies, the current financial development of underdeveloped regions has achieved remarkable results, even though it is also subject to financial risks brought about by digital currency investment and credit.
In general, developed regions have strong basic advantages in financial develop-ment, while underdeveloped regions such as Northwest China lack financial basic advantages, due to geographical remoteness, lack of digital infrastructure construction, and low awareness of overall financial services. Moreover, different industrial bases, industrial structures, development models and policy guidance have different degrees of influence on the emergence of finance and the expansion of financial functions, which leads to structural and regional differences in the impact on the resilience of county economy and affects the stability and governance of the country. So, for China's less developed regions, does financial development promote or inhibit the country's eco-nomic stability and governance?
Therefore, this paper puts forward hypothesis 1: Compared with developed regions, the current digital finance in the five northwestern provinces of China has more advantages than disadvantages, will enhance the resilience of county economy, and the impact on the five northwestern provinces is heterogeneous.
(2) How can digital finance promote governance?
Digital finance can also make economies more resilient by increasing the efficiency with which capital is allocated, boosting the vitality of entrepreneurial employment and reducing emissions. Existing literature has demonstrated that digital finance can improve the efficiency of capital allocation and thus enhance economic resilience. With the development of digital finance, Huang Yiping and Huang Zhuo[
31], Xie Xuanli et al.[
32] can create various financial service platforms, diversified financial scenarios and diversified financial models, the information evaluation method based on big data can alleviate the information shortage of small and micro enterprises, and then help to alleviate the financing constraints of small and micro enterprises, improve the efficiency of capital allocation and enhance the survival and development ability of small and medium-sized enterprises. Cui Gengrui [
33] believes that the development of digital finance can achieve the functions of financial intermediation, risk management and payment and settlement through innovations in technology, channels and methods, it is beneficial to alleviate the unbalanced distribution of financial resources and improve the efficiency of capital allocation. Feng Sixian and Xu Zhuo [
34] argue that the development of information technologies such as data repositories, the Internet, and cloud computing has created good conditions for financial institutions to make full use of industry network resources search engines and platforms, it is beneficial to eliminate the incompleteness of the economic system caused by the information matching imbalance, so as to ease the capital mismatch and improve the efficiency of capital allocation. Sun Zhenhua and Yi Xiaoli [
35] relying on the extensive application of digital technology and the in-depth mining of data elements, digital finance has effectively reduced Information asymmetry and eased financial frictions among banks, enterprises and households, it can not only reduce the financing constraints faced by enterprises, help the development of real economy, but also optimize household asset allocation and improve the efficiency of asset allocation. Moreover, the existing literature has demonstrated that digital finance can enhance economic resilience by boosting entrepreneurship and employment vitality. Zhang Haoran concluded that financial development can optimize the eco-chain of innovation, entrepreneurship and venture capital, thereby promoting the vitality of entrepreneurship and employment, and improving the applicability of urban economic system, thus contributing to the greatly enhanced resilience of urban economy [
36]. Xiong Jian, Dong Xiaolin [
37] , Li Shufen et al. [
38] point out that digital finance can significantly increase the activity of innovation and entrepreneurship, and thus improve economic resilience. Zhang Zhihua believes that financial agglomeration can promote the construction of regional financial highlands for innovative industries, accelerate the optimization of financial ecology, mechanism innovation and resource agglomeration, and enhance the continuity of innovative and entrepreneurial activities, it helps the upgrading of industrial structure and the rapid accumulation of human capital to strengthen the risk resistance of urban economic system [
39]. Gong qilin and Zhang Bingbing [
40] selected 223 prefecture-level cities and above to empirically test the economic resilience of cities enabled by digital finance, and concluded that the vitality of entrepreneurial employment plays a positive regulatory role. Obviously, while digital finance brings diversified financing channels and financial instruments, it also expands the scale of enterprises, creates more employment opportunities and significantly raises the level of employment and entrepreneurship, thus effectively stabilizing social employment, it plays an important role in enhancing the vitality of job creation and promoting high-quality employment.
In addition, research on digital finance, environmental protection and pollution emission control is also emerging. Liu Shan and Ma Lili [
41] combined the matching samples of China's industrial enterprise database and Industrial Enterprise Pollution Database from 2000 to 2013, and discussed the financial development and green transformation of manufacturing industry from the micro level, it is concluded that financial development can significantly reduce energy consumption intensity and pollution emission intensity of enterprises, and drive green transformation of manu-facturing enterprises. Mao Xiaomeng and Wani examined the impact of digital finance on the development of a green economy, based on data from 286 Chinese cities at the prefecture level and above from 2011 to 2020, the study found that digital finance significantly promotes the development of green economy [
42]. As the proportion of our carbon emissions in global carbon emissions continues to rise, problems such as inefficient use of energy, extensive growth and environmental damage have become the focus [
43]. Based on the environmental kuznets curve (EKC) , Liu Feng et al. used panel data from 282 Chinese cities from 2011 to 2019, empirically analyzes the impact of financial development on carbon emissions and the channels through which it works, it is concluded that financial development significantly suppresses carbon emissions, and effectively exerts the carbon emission reduction effect through optimizing the energy consumption structure and substantial green technology innovation [
44]. Du Yan and ran Yuan selected 30 provinces' panel data to explore the spatial effect of financial development on carbon emissions from 2008 to 2021. The results indicate that financial development suppresses carbon emissions in the region, and has the “Local-neighborhood” spillover effect [
45], to promote the low-carbon transition of the real economy is of great significance.
To sum up, this paper puts forward hypothesis 2: digital finance will enhance government governance by improving the efficiency of capital allocation, enhancing the vitality of entrepreneurship and employment, and reducing emissions, and the differences of capital allocation efficiency, the vitality of entrepreneurial employment and pollution emission will make the impact of digital finance different.