Abstract: It’s a characteristic fact that the integrated regional development of China is mainly driven by the government of China, which has a profound impact on the regional high-quality economic development. Based on the theoretical analysis of the driving effect and its specific path mechanism of the government-led regional integration strategy on the high-quality economic development, this paper conducts an empirical test of the policy effect by adopting the data of the Pan-Pearl River Delta region. The findings show that the government-led regional integration strategy did drive the high-quality economic development. Further research with the mediating effect model confirms that the government-led regional integration strategy can drive the high-quality economic development through the two paths, i.e., the industrial structure differentiation and the industrial structure supererogation; however, the driving effect of the two paths has obvious differences.

Key words: regional integration; government-led; industrial structure optimization; high-quality economic development