Abstract: Following the trend of the booming digital revolution and the reshaping of the global value chain, digital technology application has become an important power for Chinese enterprises to deeply engage in the global value chain. With the help of machine learning method, this paper makes use of the big data of the annual reports of Chinese listed companies from 2001 to 2016 to measure the digital transformation index of Chinese enterprises. Then on this basis, it empirically tests the impact of digital technology empowerment on the enterprises' embedding in the global value chain. The results show that digital empowerment can effectively promote enterprises to be embedded in the global value chain. The mechanism test reveals that digital technology empowerment can promote enterprise global value chain embedding through the two channels of the improvement of production efficiency and the improvement of supply chain efficiency. The heterogeneity analysis shows that digital technology empowerment has different effects on the value chain embedding due to the differences in enterprise ownership, enterprise scale, and export trade patterns. The expanded analysis shows there is a“U”-shaped non-linear relationship between the digital empowerment of enterprises and the global value chain position. According to the above conclusions, the government should accelerate the deep integration of digital technology and foreign trade enterprises, provide differentiated policy support to various types of enterprises, and further improve the quality of digital infrastructure, so as to lay a good foundation for Chinese foreign trade enterprises to achieve global value chain upgrade in the era of digital economy.

Key words: enterprise digital empowerment, global value chain embedding, machine learning, global value chain position