<p>Campaign-style enforcement is a common tactic used by governments to effectively achieve specific political goals. Despite the extensive employment, campaign-style enforcement has long been criticized for its unknown long-term implications and low efficacy. This study investigates companies’ responses to campaign-style inspections represented by China’s Central Environmental Inspection (CEI). The findings indicate that the overall effects of the campaign are short-term, leading to a temporary increase in production stoppages and a decrease in pollutant concentrations when inspection teams are on-site. However, beyond these transient overall effects, we find that the CEI can effectively tackle longstanding local environmental issues by mitigating local regulatory capture and reshaping local regulatory strategies. This paper acknowledges the positive role of the central campaign in regulating pollution “hotspots,” which refutes the existing research concluding that CEI can only produce short-term effects and argues that the effectiveness of campaign-style enforcement should be explored from more diverse perspectives.</p>