MECHANISM AND PATH OF CHAIN MASTER ENTERPRISES LEADING THE COLLABORATIVE DEVELOPMENT OF ZHAOQING NEW ENERGY VEHICLE INDUSTRY CHAIN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF HETEROGENEITY

Against the backdrop of intensifying competition within industrial chains, the industrial organizational capabilities of anchor enterprises have become pivotal in shaping regional industrial networks. Anchor enterprises positioned at different nodes of the value chain exhibit markedly distinct industrial driving logics. This study selects XPeng Motors' Zhaoqing production base and Ruiqing Times as comparative cases to analyze, from a heterogeneity perspective, the differentiated industrial driving logics—and their respective regional synergistic effects—of vehicle manufacturing anchor enterprises versus core-component anchor enterprises. The research finds that vehicle manufacturing anchor enterprises establish a "demand–order-driven" mechanism, leveraging vehicle production, market orders, and supplier networks to generate supporting demand upstream in the industrial chain; whereas core-component anchor enterprises establish a "technology–product-driven" mechanism, relying on core power battery technologies and scalable production capacities to catalyze industrial agglomeration across the battery supply chain. The mere establishment and clustering of anchor enterprises does not automatically yield industrial chain synergy; instead, the regional industrial environment, industrial park infrastructure, and industrial support services constitute critical supporting conditions for the regionalization of the anchor enterprise effect, thereby influencing the transformation of enterprise-level industrial driving effects into regional industrial organizational capabilities. Within a dual-chain parallel configuration, challenges such as insufficient capabilities among supporting enterprises, weak cross-chain linkages, limited shared services, and the absence of collaborative mechanisms constrain the upgrading of industrial networks. Accordingly, this study proposes actionable pathways—including enhancing the capabilities of anchor enterprises, fostering the competencies of supporting entities, constructing cross-chain network architectures, and refining collaborative mechanisms-to guide regional industrial networks from a dual-chain parallel state toward dual-chain coupling.