How to prevent and resolve debt risks is an important task in the management of state-owned enterprises and an important foundation for the high-quality development of state-owned enterprises. Taking Chinese A-share listed companies controlled by central enterprises from 2012 to 2018 as a research sample, this paper examines the impact of government audits on the manipulation of SOEs' leverage during the implementation of deleveraging policies. The results show that SOEs' leverage manipulation rises significantly after 2016, and the intervention of government audit can effectively restrain the leverage manipulation of state-owned enterprises. The mechanism test finds that restraining opportunistic behavior and alleviating information asymmetry are two paths for government auditing to control the leverage manipulation of state-owned enterprises. Further discussion finds that the benign interaction between government auditing and CPA auditing, non-state-owned shareholder supervision, analyst supervision, and media supervision also enhanced the “joint force of supervision” on the leverage manipulation of state-owned enterprises.