Abstract: Audit supervision plays an important role in safeguarding national economic security and promoting the maintenance and appreciation of state-owned enterprises' assets. Therefore, this paper selects A-share state-owned listed companies listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2007 to 2019 as samples to empirically test the impact of audit management system reform on the maintenance and appreciation of state-owned enterprises' assets and its mechanism. The findings show that the reform of audit management system is conducive to promoting the maintenance and appreciation of state-owned enterprises' assets. The audit management system reform can promote the maintenance and appreciation of state-owned enterprises' assets by reducing the intervention degree of local governments. The result of further study indicates that the higher the degree of local government intervention, the higher the two types of agency costs of state-owned enterprises will be, and the more disadvantages to the promotion of the maintenance and appreciation of the assets of state-owned enterprises by the audit management system reform. The reform of audit management system can promote the maintenance and appreciation of state-owned enterprises' assets by reducing the first type of agency cost, while the intermediary effect of the second type of agency cost is not significant.

Key words: audit management system reform, local government intervention, state-owned enterprises, maintenance and appreciation of assets