<p>University technology commercialization has become an increasingly important mechanism through which universities contribute to innovation, industrial upgrading, and broader socioeconomic development. Yet, as Chinese universities are expected to move beyond knowledge production and participate more actively in commercialization, they also face competing stakeholder demands and partly conflicting institutional roles. Drawing on Stakeholder Theory, this study examines how Chinese universities navigate these tensions within a state-coordinated innovation ecosystem. Empirically, the study adopts a qualitative case study of an elite Chinese university based on semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, including university leaders and faculty, administrative staff, and enterprise representatives. The findings show that universities perform two broad categories of roles in technology commercialization. Their general roles include academic evangelist, technology matchmaker, and wealth engine, while their innovation-system roles include comprehensive social service facilitator, system coordinator and architect, and policy adviser and institutional enabler. At the same time, these roles generate three major conflicts: misalignment between university technologies and market demand, boundary tensions between scientific research and commercialization, and difficulties in assuming expanded commercialization roles. The study argues that these tensions are not merely operational barriers, but reflect deeper institutional misalignment among academic, market, and policy logics. By linking university role conflict to knowledge flows, coordination capacity, and knowledge-to-value conversion, the paper contributes to a more systemic understanding of university technology commercialization in China’s knowledge economy and offers implications for collaborative governance and innovation policy.</p>