New infrastructure, which has been proposed by the Chinese government in recent years, consists of facilities and platforms that make use of digital and information technology. It is increasingly acknowledged as a strategic solution to promote green transformation. Using China’s provincial data from 2013 to 2020, we assess how new infrastructure influences the green transformation of the manufacturing industry (GTMI), and then examine the moderating role of fiscal expenditure structure. Our findings suggest that a 10% increase in new infrastructure improves GTMI by 1.67%. Moreover, this relationship is moderated by the structure of fiscal expenditure. Specifically, livelihood expenditure strengthens this positive effect, while productive expenditure weakens this effect. Our findings also reveal that the moderating effect of fiscal expenditure structure is subject to a threshold determined by the scale of fiscal spending. As the scale of livelihood expenditure exceeds the threshold, its positive moderating effect gets stronger. Our research indicates the importance of integrating new infrastructure into the traditional manufacturing sector and designing customized fiscal spending strategy and planning.