Abstract:     High-quality development of enterprises remains the main theme of China′s economic development, however, existing research mainly focus on financially healthy enterprises, few literatures pay attention to the increasing number of financially distressed enterprises. By the end of 2021, about 800 Chinese listed companies have received special treatment (abbreviation for “ST”) penalty, which is usually been considered as in financial distress, and gradually become an indispensable part of the economic system. In addition, 40.7% of ST firms get back into financial distress again after relieving ST penalty, the development quality of distressed firms is far from ideal. Avoid getting into or getting back into financial distress is the guarantee of enterprises′ sustainable development, therefore, the high-quality development of financial distressed enterprises needs to be urgent and deep-going studied.
     Innovation is regarded as the best way to achieve high-quality development of enterprises. However, previous studies have shown that innovation is accompanied with high risks, which may diminish the incentive for distressed firms to conduct persistent innovation after relieving ST penalty. To this end, this study tries to uncover this mystery. Taking 2007-2021 ST firms which have relieved ST penalty as samples, this study adopts Cox′s proportional-hazards model, which is most widely used in survival analysis method, to explore the effect of persistent innovation and high-quality development of distressed firms, as well as the internal mechanisms of production efficiency, financial risk and commercial performance and the moderate effect of excessive indebtedness. The results show that: after relieving ST penalty, persistent innovation can significantly reduce the probability of getting back into financial distress again, which contribute to development quality of distressed enterprises. Mechanisms show that, persistent innovation can significantly improve production efficiency and commercial performance to reduce the probability of getting back into financial distress again. Excessive indebtedness negatively moderates the relationship between persistent innovation and high-quality development of distressed enterprises.
     This study has several theoretical implications: firstly, the high-quality development of distressed enterprises is constructed by two dimensions: including whether they get back into distress again and the duration time from relieving ST penalty to getting into distress again, which expanded the research depth of high-quality development of distressed enterprises. Secondly, based on external pressure theory and stakeholder theory, this paper extents the internal mechanism effect of persistent innovation, consisting of production efficiency, corporate financial risk and commercial performance. Finally, by introducing the moderating variable of excessive indebtedness, this study reveals the boundary conditions of persistent innovation on high-quality development of distressed enterprises.
      This study also provides several management implications: firstly, distressed enterprises should pay attention to the role of persistent innovation, which can be regarded as one of the effective ways to achieve high-quality development. Meanwhile, disclosure of innovative information should also be strengthened to establish a good image through the media attention effect. Secondly, investors could incorporate persistent innovation performance of ST firms into the investment decision-making framework to improve return and reduce risk. Thirdly, government and regulatory authorities are supposed to create a better institutional environment, including resource support and system guarantee, which facilitate ST firms to carry out persistent innovation activities, and further to truly get rid of financial distress.

Key words: distressed firms, persistent innovation, excessive indebtedness, high-quality development