In the context of the reconstruction of the global competition pattern brought about by the digital trade, the paper expounds on the mechanism in which digital trade affects the export technical sophistication of manufacturing industry and explores the export technical sophistication of manufacturing industry improvement by digital trade based on China’s provincial panel data from 2008 to 2022. The results show that: firstly, digital trade has a notable improvement effect on the export technical sophistication of manufacturing industry, in which technical innovation, collocation efficiency of factors, and human capital play an outstanding intermediary role. Secondly, the export technical sophistication of manufacturing industry improvement by digital trade features nonlinearity and an increasing marginal effect manifests with the enhancement of digital trade, technical innovation, and human capital. Thirdly, there is a spatial spillover effect of digital trade on the export technical sophistication of manufacturing industry, facilitating neighboring regions to improve the export technical sophistication of manufacturing industry. By region, digital trade has the strongest influence on the east with a significant spatial spillover effect, while the influence on the west is not significant.