Reported public electric-vehicle charging-pile stock in China: Configurational pathways and policy implications

China has rapidly expanded public electric-vehicle charging infrastructure, but aggregate deployment statistics provide limited information about post-deployment service continuity. We examine province–year member-reported public charging-pile stock for 31 provincial-level regions during 2017–2023. Using fsQCA, we identify five sufficient configurations under the reported calibration and truth-table rules. The configurations show different conjunctions of market thickness, regional upgrading capacity, transport-oriented public-resource commitment, economic base, road-network density, and annual mean temperature; no single condition is necessary. Because the outcome combines existing and newly added charging piles, the results describe high reported stock rather than asset-level stock or uptime. The analysis therefore supports a measurement-oriented policy conclusion: deployment statistics should be complemented by direct service-quality and asset-flow indicators before configuration-specific instruments are evaluated.