The world of auditing companies isn’t often at the center of international tensions. For more than a decade, however, it has proved a running sore in the already fractious relationship between the world’s leading economic powers, the United States and China. That could be about to change. Washington and Beijing on Friday inked a deal described by U.S. regulators as the “first step” towards allowing them to inspect the audits of Chinese companies traded on American stock exchanges. That, in turn, should mean global investors can continue to own the U.S.-listed shares of most of those firms. When China’s largest companies first appeared on New York’s leading markets around the turn of the century, it seemed a harbinger of ever closer ties between the U.S. and Chinese economies.  That process had seemed to be in reverse after five major Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) — including oil giant Petrochina and insurer China Life — announced earlier this mont