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Abstract Currently, China is vigorously advancing high-quality economic development through multiple measures, and venture capital (VC), as a financial support activity empowering new quality productive forces, has attracted considerable attention. Throughout more than 40-year development of China’s VC industry, government governance has always played a pivotal role. Although existing studies have explored the behavioral changes in the government’s governance of the VC industry, they have not yet addressed the underlying changes in institutional logic. Based on multiple types of historical materials, this paper conducts a systematic analysis of the logical changes in the government’s governance of China’s VC industry using qualitative comparative methods from the theoretical perspective of multiple institutional logics. The main research findings are as follows: Since 1984, the logic of the Chinese government’s governance of the VC industry has undergone a three-stage evolution process, with significant changes in its normative basis, attention basis, and strategic basis for governance. At different development stages, the financial logic followed by VC institutions, the entrepreneurial logic upheld by start-ups, and the bureaucratic logic inherent in the bureaucratic system have jointly driven changes in government governance logic through distinct combinations and master-subordinate relationships. In the first stage (1984—1998), government governance logic was deeply influenced by bureaucratic logic, which exerted a certain degree of suppression on financial logic and entrepreneurial logic. In the second stage (1999—2004), the rapid rise of financial logic and entrepreneurial logic, as well as the tensions between these two logics and the operation of the original bureaucratic logic, prompted the government to adjust its governance logic. In the third stage (2005—present), the transformed government governance logic has gradually achieved effective coordination and integration of financial logic, entrepreneurial logic, and bureaucratic logic.
The empirical and theoretical contributions of this paper are mainly reflected in four aspects: Firstly, the logical changes in the Chinese government’s governance of the VC industry constitute a complex process of institutional evolution. Research on this process not only enriches the application scenarios of institutional logic theory but also provides an important practical case for understanding the relationship between the state and the market in China. Secondly, this paper fills the gaps in existing studies regarding the long-term systematic analysis and empirical refinement of the government’s governance behavior in the VC industry. The revealed three-stage evolutionary context of government governance logic breaks through the cognitive limitation of existing studies that mostly conduct quantitative analysis of and discussions on individual policies. Thirdly, by drawing on and integrating insights from existing theories, this paper constructs a universal multiple institutional logic framework applicable to analyzing changes in government governance behavior. On the one hand, by incorporating the normative basis, attention basis, and strategic basis, this framework makes up for the weakness of previous relevant research frameworks that lacked specific triggering mechanisms and observation dimensions of logic. On the other hand, it integrates various complex actors and institutional logics into the broader framework of state logic and market logic, offering more possibilities for discussing the macro theoretical metaphors of government governance. Fourthly, the analytical framework constructed and the ideal type of government governance logic summarized in this paper also respond to the current academic call for the deconstruction and redefinition of institutional logic in the Chinese context, as well as the pursuit of theorizing China’s development experience in VC research. Overall, this paper systematically summarizes and analyzes the process of logical changes in the Chinese government’s governance of the VC industry. This process not only clearly demonstrates how government governance has gradually achieved effective coordination of multiple institutional logics but also profoundly reflects the in-depth restructure of the relationship between the state and the market in China.
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Published: 01 June 2026
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