In an increasingly complex global economic environment marked by heightened market competition, how to enhance resilience has become critical for firms to effectively navigate uncertainty and achieve sustainable development.

Using panel data of China’s A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2022, this paper systematically investigates the impact of government-guided fund investment on corporate resilience and its underlying mechanism. The results show that government-guided fund investment significantly enhances corporate resilience. Mechanism testing indicates that financial support, supervision and governance, and innovation incentives are the primary channels through which government-guided funds improve corporate resilience. Heterogeneity analysis further shows that government-guided funds with higher administrative levels, limited partnership structures, greater patience, extensive investment experience, and higher investment intensity have a more pronounced effect on enhancing corporate resilience. Corporate resilience in capital-intensive industries, high-tech sectors, highly-competitive industries, and regions with vibrant venture capital activity tends to benefit more from government-guided fund participation. Expansion analysis finds that government-guided fund investment can produce a synergistic effect with R&D subsidies, jointly enhancing corporate resilience.

The marginal contributions of this paper are as follows: First, it evaluates the implementation effect of government-guided funds from the perspective of corporate crisis response capabilities. Second, it expands the research on the determinants of corporate resilience. Third, it offers policy insights for enhancing the effectiveness of government-guided funds.

This paper has the following policy implications: First, the top-level design of government-guided funds should be optimized to strengthen their role as “patient capital”. Second, the operational efficiency and targeting of government-guided funds should be improved to better allocate limited fiscal resources. Third, the deployment of government-guided funds should be tailored to local conditions and integrated into a systematic policy framework.