一个时代造就一种企业组织模式。近年来，信息技术的广泛应用在对传统企业组织产生深刻影响的同时，也催生了一种新型企业空间组织，即虚拟企业。虚拟企业的出现引起了学者们的强烈关注，并逐渐成为各个学科的热点议题。总体来说，虚拟企业的研究主要集中在经济学、管理学和社会学，而地理学的研究还有待进一步深入。在这种背景下，本文结合统计数据、企业访谈和问卷调查等资料和数据，分析虚拟企业的概念和特点，重点剖析中国虚拟企业空间分布格局及其影响因素。研究结果显示，中国虚拟企业分布存在显著的地理集中特征，其空间分布正在加强中国传统大型城市的地位；信息化水平和人口素质是影响虚拟企业空间分布的重要因素。

It is now widely recognized that new information and communication technologies (ICTs) are getting more and more important for firms to achieve competitiveness in the era of internet. Indeed, ICTs have been helping firms to evolve towards new models for the organization of production, such as lean production, agile manufacturing and virtual enterpsies (VEs). Among these new models, VE is considered as one of the most promising model, while it can meet the demands for quick response to changing technological innovations, production specifications, globalizing markets and customized orientation. In particular, VE is a network of organizationally independent and geographically distributed companies that cooperate to address business opportunities, in which member enterprises share information, costs and skills. In China, the development of VEs in the last several years has been incredibly fast. It is against such a background that this paper investigates the development of VEs in China with special attention to its geographical features and then analyzes the factors behind the spatial distribution of VEs, through a case study of 317 Chinese virtual enterprises. The results indicate that VEs development in China in the last several years shows very clear features of spatial concentration in major cities and developed regions, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Fujian and Jilin. And the results of a multiple regression model suggest that ICTs are clearly important in deciding the provincial distribution of VEs in China, while the influence of internet and population quality is also significant.