本研究首次以中央企业风电投资开发的行为机制为研究视角，解释中国风电开发近二十年来从无到有高速增长的发展奇迹。现有产业政策和国有企业理论认为，中央企业是国家实现战略性新兴产业发展的重要政策工具。其推动产业发展包括动机、优势以及投资决策三方面的特征：（1）完全由外部政治压力驱动；（2）优势均来自政府特殊优待和市场垄断地位；（3）投资决策缺乏经济理性，效率低下。而预算软约束是其推动产业发展的机制根源。但在现实中，中央企业的风电开发投资行为在这三个特征上均与传统观点存在偏差。由此提出两个研究问题：（1）为什么中央企业的风电开发投资行为与现有解释不符？（2）为什么中央企业会存在这样的行为机制推动风电发展？ 基于现有文献的不足，本研究挑战了中央企业是“铁板一块”的隐含假设，引入中央企业内部组织视角，拓展了传统“中央政府-中央企业”单维度解释框架，并构建了中央企业风电投资内部和外部预算约束机制的分析框架。通过大量深入的田野调查获取一手质性资料，本研究发现：中央企业推动风电发展并非传统观点所认为的是完全出于政治压力和获取政府特殊优待，而是得益于预算约束硬化下，中央企业所产生的内部动力。具体而言：（1）中央企业最初投资开发风电是源于国有企业和电力体制改革下央企下级公司“去边缘化”动机；（2）市场竞争、集团公司对风电投资的重视程度不足以及下级公司与地方政府的弱政治关联消减了中央企业的地方资源动员能力和投资优势，央企下级公司难以依靠政府给予的特殊优待生存发展；（3）在市场竞争下，中央企业的投资决策遵循经济理性和市场逻辑，并最终取得良好收益；（4）中央企业推动风电发展得益于内部和外部预算约束的双重硬化，由此激发并提升了其投资动力和能力。本研究的创新之处在于：（1）在研究视角上，拓展了以产业政策为主流解释中国风电产业发展的研究范式，首次提供了中央企业行为机制的微观视角；（2）在理论贡献上，挑战了现有理论对于中央企业产业发展行为机制的核心观点，对中央企业推动国家战略性新兴产业发展的行为机制做出了全新解释。并揭示了中央企业开发投资的内部和外部预算约束机制；（3）在研究数据上，本研究获取了丰富详细的一手数据资料，弥补现有中央企业研究实证资料的缺乏问题。

This is the first study to explain China’s wind power “miracle” – in which the country’s wind power installation grew rapidly from a very low starting point over the course of 20 years – by exploring the investment logic of central state-owned enterprises (CSOEs). In the view of conventional theories, CSOEs are important policy tools to accelerate the development of emerging or strategic industries. Current studies indicate three key features of CSOEs’ investment behavior as industrial policy tools: (1) motivation by political pressure; (2) enjoyment of preferential treatment and monopoly status provided by the government; (3) lack of economic rationality and efficiency. The soft budget constraint of CSOEs serves as core mechanism to promote industrial development. However, CSOEs’ investment behavior in practice deviated from all three key features, which leads to two research questions: (1) why did the investment logic of CSOEs deviate from the conventional wisdom? (2) why did CSOEs develop this investment logic and manage to promote the growth of the wind power industry?To fill this research gap of the existing literature, this study challenges the assumption that CSOEs are monolithic when making decisions. By introducing the internal organization perspective of CSOEs, this study constructs an expanded explanatory framework based on the current one-dimensional explanatory framework of the “central government-CSOE” relationship. The study also conducts an analysis of the internal and external budget constraints to reveal the core mechanism by which CSOEs have accelerated the growth of the wind power industry. Based on extensive, in-depth field investigations and qualitative data analysis, this study discovered that CSOEs were not solely motivated by “top-down” political imperatives and did not generally enjoy preferential treatment from the government. Instead, the CSOEs that managed to develop wind power businesses were largely driven by internal impetus due to hardened budget constraints. To be more specific: (1) it was the marginalized subordinate companies of CSOEs that initiated and drove the development of wind power from the bottom up for organization survival; (2) the perceived advantages of CSOEs in their ability to mobilize local resources were diminished by market competition, inadequate support from corporate headquarters and weak political connections with local authorities; (3) market competition and obtaining good economic returns in accordance with market logic were found to be the primary driver of CSOEs’ investments in wind power; (4) hardened internal and external budget constraints were the core mechanisms for CSOEs in promoting the growth of the wind power industry. Both ways of hardening budget constraints forced the wind power businesses of CSOEs to participate in market competition and improve capacity and economic efficiency through their own attempts to survive and grow. This research contributes to the existing literature by providing a firm-level explanatory framework for China’s wind power development. It also challenges the conventional wisdom on the role of CSOEs in industrial development through empirical and theoretical analyses. To that end, a substantial number of original, first-hand empirical evidence and data were collected through intensive field work, filling a crucial gap in the existing literature on CSOEs.