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High-quality agricultural development (HQAD) in China is essential to achieving Chinese-style modernization, which represents a uniquely Chinese path to modernization characterized by coordinated development across economic, political, cultural, social, and ecological dimensions. Against the backdrop of accelerating digitalization in global value chains (GVCs), exploring how it influences China’s HQAD carries significant theoretical value and policy implications. This study, for the first time, integrates GVC digitalization and HQAD into a unified analytical framework. Utilizing panel data from 30 Chinese provinces from 2009 to 2020, it empirically examines the relationship between them and the underlying mechanisms. GVC digitalization is measured with the interaction term between provincial digital GVC participation and global digitalization level, while HQAD is comprehensively assessed using a multi-dimensional evaluation indicator system constructed based on the new development philosophy, employing the entropy weight TOPSIS method. The findings reveal that GVC digitalization significantly promotes HQAD in China. For every one-standard-deviation increase in the degree of digitalization, the level of HQAD increases by an average of approximately 0.02 percentage points. Mechanism analysis further identifies industrial structure upgrading and rural integration of primary, secondary, and tertiary industries as two crucial transmission pathways. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that this promoting effect is more pronounced in major grain-marketing regions, provinces with better digital infrastructure, and those with higher levels of human capital. This research provides new empirical evidence for understanding agricultural transformation in the digital era and offers policy insights for leveraging GVC digitalization to advance HQAD.