Government subsidies are the main means of stimulating corporate innovation.. With the sample of 278 firms of strategic emerging industries from 2010 to 2013, this paper applied the fixed panel data model to study the effect of government subsidies on R&D investment. The empirical results show that: First, government subsidies have a critical point, when the subsidy is lower than the point, it will induce more R&D investment, otherwise, the subsidy will have a crowding-out effect on companies’ R&D investments. Second, firm’s rent-seeking behavior can improve the leverage effect of government subsidies. However, rent-seeking behavior is not a productive activity, thus obtaining subsidies through rent-seeking will distort the government subsidy policy, which is aimed at promoting R&D innovation.