From a worldwide perspective, independence and honesty are the decisive factors for the success of the anti-corruption agencies. With the deepening reform of discipline inspection and supervision system, the independence and honesty of anti-corruption institutions will be further strengthened. Therefore, it is very significant to conduct an empirical test on how the independence and honesty of anti-corruption institutions affect the anti-corruption effort. In this paper, based on the existing literature, we take the indicator that if the secretary of the provincial commission for discipline inspection is from other provinces or the central government as the measure of the independence of an anti-corruption agency, and the indicator that if the secretary of the provincial commission for discipline inspection has ever had an unlawful experience as the measure of the integrity of an anti-corruption agency. And then, we conduct an empirical test of the impact of independence and honesty of anti-corruption agencies on anti-corruption effort. The research results show that an exchanged secretary can enhance the anti-corruption effort, but this effect mainly comes from the secretary from the central government, while other province’ parallel exchange discipline committee secretary has no significant impact on anti-corruption effort. A secretary who has unlawful experience has a significant negative impact on the strength of anti-corruption, which indicates the importance of the honesty of an anti-corruption agency. There are two main contributions. Firstly, the strength of anti-corruption is re-measured. There are controversies about how to measure the intensity of anti-corruption and the degree of corruption in the existing literature, leading to the existence of different conclusions. This paper takes the growth rate of the number of officials committing a corrupt crime as a measure of anti-corruption effort, which not only has stronger logical consistency, but also makes the conclusion more insight and explanatory, providing a reference for future research. Secondly, we take unlawful experience of a secretary at a provincial level as a measure of the honesty of an anti-corruption agency, and test its impact on the anti-corruption effort. This research has made an important supplement to the existing literature and has strong practical significance. The policy implications of this paper are obvious: because an " airborne” secretary from the central government can improve the independence of anti-corruption agencies and improve the efficiency of anti-corruption, it should further strengthen the discipline of the vertical management system, further extend the scope of vertical management to the municipal and county commissions for discipline inspection, and enhance the independence of the anti-corruption institutions from a government point of view. At the same time, we should strengthen the selection and management of the staff of the anti-corruption agencies, and ensure the honesty of the anti-corruption institutions themselves. The conclusions of this paper provide empirical evidence and theoretical support for China’s anti-corruption work, and have important policy implications for the long-term reform of the corruption governance mechanism.