With the deepening of basic education curriculum reform, the cultivation of core competencies has become the core guide for high-quality educational development. It emphasizes the cultivation of students’ key abilities and essential qualities that are necessary for lifelong development and social development. As a basic discipline that carries cultural inheritance and thinking development, Chinese language teaching, especially reading instruction in primary school Chinese, is an important carrier for cultivating core competencies. It is directly related to the formation of students’ comprehensive abilities, such as language construction, thinking improvement, aesthetic appreciation, and cultural understanding. Currently, there are still many issues in primary school Chinese reading instruction that are inconsistent with the requirements of core competency cultivation. Therefore, based on the perspective of core competencies, this paper closely examines the essential characteristics of primary school Chinese reading instruction, combines the current status of teaching practice, deeply analyzes the problems existing in teaching, and explores the construction of a reading instruction strategy system that is suitable for cultivating core competencies. The research aims to provide operable teaching guidance for primary school Chinese teachers, promote the transformation of reading instruction from “knowledge-based” to “competency-based,” and ultimately achieve the goal of improving teaching quality and promoting the comprehensive development of students’ core competencies. It provides a useful reference for the practical exploration of core competency cultivation in basic education.