The central-local relationship serves as the institutional foundation for regional economic governance, shaping the incentives and constraints for regional competition and cooperation. The Chinese central-local system is characterized by dynamic adaptability and governance efficiency. Through mechanisms such as fiscal and taxation policies, administrative management, and official performance evaluations, it adjusts the conditions for regional economic behavior to meet the demands of specific historical stages and regional development goals. On one hand, the central government embeds regional economic development objectives into local incentive mechanisms, guiding the transformation of regional competition strategies. This includes shifting the focus of competition from competing for growth to competing for development, expenditure behavior from prioritizing infrastructure over public welfare to equalizing basic public services, and development models from local protectionism to leveraging comparative advantages. These adjustments enhance regional economic governance efficiency through optimized competition incentives and strategies. On the other hand, through institutional arrangements such as counterpart support, integrated cooperation, and the construction of major functional zones, the central government reduces the costs of regional cooperation while retaining competition incentives, thereby increasing cooperation benefits. This fosters complementary advantages, maximizes scale economies, and internalizes externalities, achieving cross-regional cooperation models that align national and regional governance efficiencies. Against the backdrop of profound changes in the regional economic landscape and the transformation of domestic development goals, regional economic governance faces new circumstances and challenges. In the future, it is necessary to focus on key practical issues such as coordinated regional development in the digital era, developing new quality productive forces tailored to local conditions, and the construction of a unified national market. By innovating regional economic governance research from the dimensions of new governance entities, new development goals, and new governance tools, we can further enrich and refine the theoretical system of Chinese regional economic governance, providing theoretical support for coordinated regional development and high-quality regional development in the new era.