The development of emerging industries in a region is one of the focuses of economic geography research. Particularly, research on the development and spatial distribution of renewable energy industries under the background of global climate change and energy crisis is of great importance in China. This paper examines the spatial distribution of wind turbine manufacturing enterprises and influencing factors. Wind power and wind power equipment manufacturing industry in China developed very rapidly and the country became the largest wind power market during the past 10 years, primarilly due to the policy support of the central and local governments. This research built a database of enterprises based on the statistics of China's installed wind power capacity from 2005 to 2012. The paper analyzes the spatial distribution of the wind turbine manufacturing enterprises and subsidiary companies at the prefecture level. The results show that most of the domestic wind turbine manufacturing enterprises were founded by equipment manufacturing enterprises and are located in the same city as their parents firms, while foreign firms are often located in cities with strong equipment manufacturing industrial base. The subsidiary companies of wind turbine manufacturing enterprises are located in the northwest, North China, and northeast as well as the east coastal areas with rich wind resources. The econometric result of zero inflated negative binomial regression model shows that policy, industrial base, and wind resource endowment had different impacts on the location choice of the wind equipment manufacturing enterprises and their subsidiaries. Wind resource endowment and local government support have significant impacts on the location choice of subsidiary companies of wind turbine manufacturing enterprises, while industrial base mainly affects the location choice of the wind equipment manufacturing parent firms. All three factors considered together, industrial base has the most important impact on location choice. The results of this research provides important information for wind equipment manufacturing enterprises to choose new locations and for local governments to develop strategic industrial development policies.