New York Stock Exchange trading floor. Credit: Scott Beale via Flickr
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
Exclusive longform investigative journalism, Q&As, news and analysis, and data on Chinese business elites and corporations. We publish China scoops you won't find anywhere else.
A weekly curated reading list on China from David Barboza, Pulitzer Prize-winning former Shanghai correspondent for The New York Times.
A daily roundup of China finance, business and economics headlines.
We offer discounts for groups, institutions and students. Go to our Subscriptions page for details.
Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. Trade Representative under Donald Trump, reflects on his decision to launch the trade war with China and begin the process of "strategic decoupling" — a process he says the U.S. must see through to the end.
