At present, the key problem in governmental research project funding management in China is how to establish an effective incentive and restraint mechanism. From the perspective of the incentives mechanism, in recent years, the introduction of indirect costs has replaced the previous management overhead fees. Besides this, currently performance allowance is permitted in indirect costs, and the limit of personnel costs proportion is abolished, all of which demonstrate that China′s governmental research funding management has entered a new stage characterized by incentive orientation and strengthen the financial autonomy of project performers such as universities and research institutes. However, there are still some challenges to be addressed. For example, as the policy barriers from the central government have been removed, how to make sure researchers really benefit from this? Compared with the value of equipment and infrastructure, the value of human resources has been underestimated in project funding management for a long time. How to truly reflect the creativity of scientific researchers in indirect costs of the governmental research project? 
    From the perspective of constraint mechanism, the responsibility of the project performing organizations such as universities and research institutes has increased after the emphasis of financial autonomy for these organizations. How to effectively restrict the project performing organizations from illegal behaviors, and make sure they will undertake the responsibility to make the governmental project′s funds legally and effectively managed? At the national level, in recent years it is required to implement the credit management of scientific research projects and promote the verification of indirect costs of scientific research projects by linking it with the credits of the performing organizations. In fact, it is necessary and important to link the credit management with the indirect costs, so as to effectively encourage the performing organizations and researchers to make the best use of the governmental project funds, and also restrict them from illegal behaviors. In another word, linking credit with indirect costs management is vital to build effective incentive and restraint mechanism in governmental project funding management, and solve the above problems. 
    It can be seen that under the trend of credit management, how to establish an effective incentive and restraint mechanism through the indirect costs of financial research projects is not only an important theoretical research topic in indirect cost management, but also an important policy topic. The existing studies about the indirect costs management of governmental research projects, mainly introduced domestic and foreign practical experiences. In-depth theoretical analysis on how to establish an effective and balanced incentive and constraint mechanism is rare in these studies. Therefore, these studies have limited value in inspiring China′s mechanism design. Based on the incentive and restraint framework of the principal-agent theory, this paper analyzes and compares the incentive and restraint mechanisms in the indirect costs management of governmental research projects in the United States, Britain and China. Then the necessity and importance of establishing the incentive and restraint mechanism by linking the credit management with the indirect costing of governmental research projects in China are illustrated. Finally, this paper puts forward the basic framework and key points to improve the indirect costs management of governmental research projects in China under the trend of credit management, so as to play a supporting role in the construction of effective incentive and restraint mechanism in governmental research project fund management.