Advancing Sustainable Digital Industrial Security: Cross-Border Data Flow Regulation and Resilience of Digital Economy Core Industrial Chains in China

Against the backdrop of deepening global digital economic integration and intensifying geopolitical competition, cross-border data flow regulation has become a core institutional arrangement for coordinating development and security. Based on panel data from 31 Chinese provinces from 2015 to 2025, this study proposes an adapted provincial DFRI and a comprehensive resilience index, which together provide an operational foundation for examining the relationship between data regulation and industrial chain resilience across Chinese regions. It empirically examines the effects, transmission mechanisms, and configurational pathways through which regulation influences industrial chain resilience. The results show that cross-border data flow regulation significantly enhances the resilience of the core industrial chains of the digital economy. The balance between efficiency and security plays a key mediating role in the process through which regulation affects industrial chain resilience. Moreover, the regulatory effect exhibits significant heterogeneity in the level of digital economic development. The coefficient of REG is higher in provinces whose digital economy development index exceeds the sample mean than in provinces at or below the sample mean. Further, fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) identifies four equivalent pathways through which regulatory improvement, infrastructure development, innovation investment, digital trade, and industrial compatibility jointly drive high resilience. The findings provide empirical evidence and policy implications for constructing regionally differentiated data governance systems and enhancing the resilience of China’s core digital economy industrial chains.