Technical standards, as government regulatory policy instruments, play an important role in regulation and promotion of technological innovation, thereby influencing industries’ position in global value chains. From a policy instrument perspective, this paper investigates the differentiated impacts of heterogeneous technical standards on the global value chain position of China’s high-tech industries. Focusing on national and industry technical standards, this study analyzes the fixed-effects model based on panel data of China’s high-tech industries from 2000 to 2018. The findings reveal that: technical standards significantly enhance the global value chain position of high-tech industries overall; in terms of standards heterogeneity, voluntary regulatory instruments like recommended technical standards contribute more significantly to the advancement in global value chain position than mandatory standards, which are command-and-control instruments focusing on fundamental areas such as environmental protection and safety. Mechanism analysis further shows that technological innovation is an important mediating channel, especially mandatory standards play a positive role by promoting green technological innovation. Based on the research findings, policy recommendations are proposed to optimize the mix of policy instruments, adopt differentiated regulatory instrument strategies, implement industry-differentiated regulatory strategies, and construct a standard-innovation synergy mechanism.