Abstract: The green development of the manufacturing industry is the key to achieve the“dual carbon”goal and the strategic goal of a strong country in manufacturing. The digital technology has the characteristics of knowledge-intensive and clean, and its deep integration with the manufacturing industry has become a new engine driving the green development of the manufacturing industry. On the basis of systematically analyzing the functioning mechanism of digitalization empowering the green development of the manufacturing industry, this paper empirically tests the effect of digitalization on the green development of the manufacturing industry. The findings show that, in general, digitalization has promoted the green development of the manufacturing industry. The heterogeneity study indicates that heterogeneity in manufacturing industry and the heterogeneity in digital technology can have an impact on the effectiveness of digital empowerment. The mechanism test reveals that digitalization can promote the green development of the manufacturing industry mainly through the four paths, i.e., optimization of the factor structure, improvement of resource allocation, reduction of costs, and technological innovation, but the expansion of the production scale will play a certain inhibiting role. Environmental regulation plays an important role of regulating in the process of digitalization empowering the green development of manufacturing industry, and there is an optimal range of the environmental regulation intensity; within the range, the effect of digitalization empowerment is the greatest. Therefore, it is necessary to accelerate the digital transformation of the manufacturing industry, smooth the transmission path of digital technology empowerment, and maintain the intensity of environmental regulation within a reasonable range, so as to achieve green and high-quality development of the manufacturing industry.

Key words: digitalization, manufacturing industry, green development, environmental regulation