Computing power infrastructure and corporate financialization: evidence from China’s supercomputing centers

Corporate financialization diverts resources from productive investment and undermines long-term competitiveness, yet the role of technological infrastructure in shaping this trend remains underexplored. This paper investigates whether and how computing power infrastructure affects corporate financialization. Using Chinese A-share listed companies from 2012 to 2023, we exploit the staggered establishment of National Supercomputing Centers (NSCs) as quasi-natural experiments and employ a staggered difference-in-differences model for causal identification. Baseline results show that computing power deployment significantly reduces corporate financialization levels by approximately 1.1 percentage points. Mechanism analysis reveals two transmission channels: enhanced data factor capitalization capability and improved intelligent decision-making efficiency. Both channels strengthen core business returns and weaken the motivation to allocate funds to financial assets. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the inhibitory effect is more pronounced in computing-intensive industries and firms with low analyst coverage and is concentrated in speculative rather than precautionary financial assets. Extended analysis confirms that computing power deployment promotes real investment reallocation, with significant increases in fixed assets, R&D, and capital expenditure intensity. Spatial Durbin model estimation further reveals that the inhibitory effect extends beyond host city boundaries to surrounding cities. These findings highlight the potential of digital infrastructure investment as a policy instrument for correcting excessive financialization and guiding corporate resources back to the real economy.