Against the backdrop of intensifying global digital governance competition and accelerated construction of digital technology and regulatory barriers by Western economies, digital globalization has moved beyond a purely firm-level commercial activity and has become a strategic pillar for China to counter digital hegemony, enhance its voice in international digital governance, and advance its ambitions as a major trading and cultural power. In this context, supply chain digitalization constitutes a critical foundation for corporate international digital competitiveness, yet its role in facilitating digital globalization remains insufficiently examined.

This paper employs a large language model to conduct quantitative text analysis of Chinese local government work reports from 2016 to 2023, constructs a prefecture-level index of supply chain digitalization, and integrates it with digital App export data to empirically investigate the impact of local supply chain digitalization on digital globalization. The results indicate that local supply chain digitalization significantly increases overseas downloads of locally-based digital Apps, effectively promoting digital globalization. Mechanism testing reveals that this effect operates primarily through two channels: improving the regional industrial ecosystem and optimizing corporate production organization modes. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the promoting effect is more pronounced in coastal cities, among large firms, and in destination countries with greater cultural distance as well as along the Belt and Road Initiative routes. Further analysis indicates that, among different stages of the supply chain, only digitalization in the production stage significantly facilitates digital globalization. In terms of product types, supply chain digitalization significantly promotes exports of utility and productivity Apps, but exhibits a crowding-out effect on entertainment and social Apps.

The contributions of this paper are threefold: First, it elucidates how supply chain digitalization supports digital globalization through the construction of autonomous and controllable industrial foundations, filling the gap in research on the drivers of digital globalization and providing micro-level evidence on how China can enhance its international communication “soft power” by consolidating its industrial “hard power”. Second, it moves beyond traditional dictionary-based or single-indicator approaches by introducing a large language model, substantially improving measurement precision and reliability and offering a scalable and replicable framework for quantitative research at the local level. Third, it offers guidance for China in responding to Western-dominated digital rule barriers by strengthening supply chain “hard capabilities” and in promoting high-quality digital expansion along the Belt and Road.