<p>The digital economy has emerged as a strategic engine driving economic transformation by reconfiguring factor allocation and revolutionizing industrial structures. Digital industrialization (DI) and industrial digitalization (ID) serve as the dual engines of the digital economy. Their coordinated development is crucial for optimizing and upgrading the internal ecosystem of the digital economy, and represents a key breakthrough in addressing regional imbalances in digital economic development. This study constructs a comprehensive evaluation framework to assess the coupling coordination level between DI and ID across 30 Chinese provinces over 2011–2022, and further employs Dagum Gini coefficient, kernel density estimation, Markov chain analysis to investigate regional disparities and dynamic evolution characteristics of the coupling coordination level. The results reveal three key findings: First, the coupling coordination level between DI and ID in China remains relatively low, though it exhibits a steady upward trend overall. Second, significant regional disparities exist in the coupling coordination level, with variations primarily attributable to inter-regional differences. Third, the dynamic evolution of the coupling coordination level demonstrates stability and directionality: the characteristic of path dependence constrains provinces from achieving rapid leapfrog growth in the short term, and the coupling coordination level of adjacent provinces exerts a guiding influence on the transition direction of a given province. This study enriches the existing literature by constructing a systematic framework for analyzing the coordinated development between DI and ID, and provides policy implications for promoting balanced digital economy development across regions.</p>