Spatial Pattern and Influencing Factors of China’s Digital Trade Resilience under the Impact of Trade Frictions

In the era of the digital economy, digital trade has demonstrated strong vitality, becoming a crucial driving force for the high-quality development of national and regional economies. However, understanding the resilience of digital trade in the face of external crises is an important topic. Taking the backdrop of Sino-US trade friction, this paper constructs a resilience index system for digital trade. It utilizes entropy method, kernel density estimation, and ArcGIS mapping to calculate and visually analyze the resilience of China’s digital trade from 2017 to 2021. Additionally, a Tobit model is constructed to explore the main influencing factors of digital trade resilience patterns. The research findings indicate: 1) temporally, during the period of Sino-US trade friction, China’s digital trade resilience shows an overall upward trend, but there are regional differences in resilience levels across the country, with a severe polarization phenomenon. 2) Spatially, high resilience is observed in the eastern and central regions of China, while the western and northeastern regions exhibit low resilience. 3) From a dimensional perspective, the resistance of digital trade resilience displays a spatial distribution of high values in the east and low values in the west. The recovery force is aggregated along coastal areas, and the renewal force tends to aggregate along the eastern coastline. 4) Factors such as economic scale, industrial structure, urbanization rate, government fiscal expenditure, and technological talents significantly promote the enhancement of digital trade resilience. This study reveals the dynamic characteristics and influencing factors of digital trade resilience in responding to external shocks, providing theoretical basis and policy suggestions for enhancing digital trade resilience, and promoting high-quality economic development in China.