Abstract: The Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee explicitly proposed accelerating the realization of high-level technological self-reliance and self-strengthening, and leading the development of new quality productive forces through scientific and technological innovation. In the era of the digital economy, the digital transformation of private enterprises stands as one of the core pathways for fostering new quality productive forces. Based on data from A-share non-state-owned listed companies (2011-2023), this study employs the ERNIE 3.0 large language model to identify corporate digital transformation behaviors and empirically analyzes the mechanism through which digital transformation affects new quality productive forces. The results indicate that the digital transformation of private enterprises significantly enhances their level of new quality productive forces. This conclusion remains robust after undergoing various tests, including instrumental variable estimation and propensity score matching. Further heterogeneity analysis reveals that the facilitating effect of digital transformation is more pronounced in strategic emerging industries, large-scale enterprises, and enterprises located in central and western China. Mechanism tests uncover that digital transformation primarily empowers new quality productive forces through three channels: enhancing technological innovation capabilities, optimizing the structure of human capital, and alleviating financing constraints. The government should concentrate on improving institutional supply and the broader development environment—refining policy support systems, strengthening talent cultivation, and bolstering financial empowerment—to solidify the external foundations for private enterprises to leverage digital transformation in fostering new quality productive forces. Private enterprises, for their part, should prioritize enhancing the quality and efficiency of their digital transformation efforts to reinforce the micro-level foundational support for the formation of new quality productive forces.

Key words: private enterprises, digital transformation, new quality productive forces, scientific and technological innovation