Based on the‘Opinions of the Audit Office on Strengthening the Audit of Resources and Environment’issued in 2009 as an event,we construct a quasi-natural experiment to examine the impact of government environmental audit on corporate environmental performance using the DID method.We find that government environmental audit has a significant positive impact on corporate environmental performance,indicating that government environmental audit can effectively improve corporate environmental performance by playing a revealing,resisting and preventing function.Furthermore,we find that the positive impact of government environmental audit on corporate environmental performance is mainly manifested in companies with greater audit intensity,greater penalty power,and greater judicial power,companies with stronger government environmental supervision,and companies with strong media environmental supervision and public environmental supervision.Our research conclusions confirm the micro-environmental governance effects of the government environmental audit.Meanwhile our research conclusions theoretically expand the study of the driving factors of corporate environmental performance,and provide important inspirations in practice to win the battle against pollution prevention and promote the construction of ecological civilization.