With China??s emphasis on sustainable development, the central government has continuously introduced innovative environmental protection policies in an effort to address the currentenvironmental governance dilemma of local governments. This paper takes the central environmental protection inspection policy, which is very characteristic of China??s environmental governance,as a quasi-natural experiment. Based on the data of listed firms in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets from 2012 to 2018, we analyze the impact of central environmental protection supervision on the environmental, social, a multi-period difference-in-differences model is used to analyze the impact of vertical environmental regulation on corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance. It is found that the central environmental protection inspection policy significantly improves corporate ESG performance, with government environmental governance and corporate green technology innovation as potential channels, and media attention and analyst attention can increase the positive impact of the policy on corporate ESG performance. In addition, the positive effect of central environmental protection supervision on corporate ESG performance is more pronounced in firms that are prone to “government-business collusion”, have lower financing constraints,and the latter four batches of inspection. This paper not only enriches the research on the micro impact of vertical environmental regulation on enterprises, but also expands the research on the factors influencing corporate ESG performance, which is is of great significance in exploring the driving force behind the corporate ESG performance and promoting sustainable development.