China is the world's largest goods trading nation, accounting for a significant proportion of global exports and maintaining a persistent trade surplus. However, China's export trade urgently needs to transition from "quantitative expansion" to "qualitative improvement," with enhancing the technological complexity of exports being a crucial step in boosting its hard power. Industrial agglomeration is not merely a spatial concentration but a comprehensive form of production coordination and promotion. It identifies similar or identical production units within intricate production networks to collaborate, thereby reducing costs and improving quality. As the division of labor in global value chains continues to deepen, manufacturing development relies not only on its own capabilities but increasingly on the integrated growth of manufacturing and producer services. The spatial clustering of these two sectors significantly enhances production efficiency.
Based on provincial panel data from China between 2010 and 2023, this study employs a two-way fixed-effects model to investigate the impact and mechanism of synergistic agglomeration between producer services and manufacturing on the technological complexity of high-tech manufacturing exports. The findings reveal a nonlinear relationship, with synergistic agglomeration between manufacturing and producer services exhibiting a significant promoting effect on export technological complexity.