Abstract:Taking the anti-corruption campaign ever since the 18th CPC National Congress as a perspective, this paper explores the impact of corruption governance on audit expenses of 1, 612 listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange’ Empirical studies show that corruption governance is significantly and positively correlated with audit expenses, and the impact on SOEs exceeds non-SOEs’ In addition to that, legal environment is also significantly and positively correlated with audit expenses’ However, the effect of corruption governance lags behind the improvements of legal environment’ Hence this paper deduces that corruption governance curbs the motive for companies’ rent-seeking behaviors, which will impel companies to break away from dependencies on non-marketable political connections’ Then, companies will head for an operation model that embraces fair competition, legalization and marketization; meanwhile, it is necessary to promote national legislation of anti-corruption; and companies will operate under an honest and clean environment.