Industry-Education Integration under the Chain-Chief System of Linyi’s Signature Industrial Chains: Pathways for Empowering the High-Quality Development of the Private Economy

Abstract

The private economy is a major component of China’s regional economic development and an important source of employment, innovation, and social vitality. In Linyi, Shandong Province, private enterprises contribute more than 90% of local taxation, urban employment, innovation outputs, and enterprise numbers, making them central to the city’s transition from a large commercial city to a stronger industrial city. Under the emerging chain-chief governance system, the key policy issue is how to use industry-education integration to serve the upgrading of private enterprises embedded in signature industrial chains. Taking Linyi’s thirteen signature industrial chains as a regional case, this study analyses the institutional framework, implementation carriers, developmental advantages, structural constraints, and optimization pathways of industry-education integration. The paper proposes an analytical framework of “four-chain integration” and “dual-track coordination”, integrating the industrial chain, education chain, talent chain, and innovation chain, while coordinating government-led chain governance with enterprise-college collaborative implementation. The findings suggest that industry-education integration can enhance the human-capital supply, technology transfer, and innovation capacity of private enterprises, but its effectiveness is constrained by supply-demand mismatch, limited participation of small and medium-sized private enterprises, barriers to factor mobility, and insufficient depth of collaborative governance. Policy recommendations include building closed-loop chain-based innovation ecosystems, improving chain-oriented financial services, establishing regularized demand-list and service-list mechanisms, and promoting the two-way flow of talent and technology. This study provides a practical policy reference for integrating vocational education reform with industrial-chain governance in resource-based and manufacturing-oriented cities.