CNBC’s The China Connection newsletter: U.S. regulatory scrutiny fans Chinese stock delisting fears

This report is from this week’s edition of CNBC’s The China Connection newsletter, which brings you insights and analysis on what’s driving the world’s second-largest economy. Each week, we’ll explore the biggest business stories in China, give a lowdown on market moves and help you set up for the week ahead. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.

Increased regulatory scrutiny of U.S.-listed Chinese firms has stoked delisting worries, threatening the decade-plus run of Alibaba and other Chinese companies on U.S. exchanges.

A broad “everything is on the table” comment from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on April 9 has reignited fears on Wall Street that hundreds of billions of dollars may flow out in a forced delisting of Chinese stocks from U.S. exchanges.

Thanks to the latest version of a law made in 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission can prompt a Chinese stock delisting if the company is deemed noncompliant with audit requests for two straight years. Paul Atkins, sworn on Monday as SEC chairman, indicated during a hearing last month that he would uphold that process for scrutinizing U.S.-listed Chinese stocks.

The continuing analyst and press coverage of Bessent’s comments reflects how uncertainty is broadening out — even warranting a related piece in the New York Post tabloid.

“In an extreme scenario, U.S. investors may have to liquidate US$800bn worth of holdings in Chinese stocks if they are banned from investing in Chinese securities,” Goldman Sachs said in a note last week.

They predicted Chinese investors might also need to sell their U.S. financial assets, with an estimated worth of roughly $370 billion in stocks and $1.3 trillion in bonds.

KraneShares, which runs a popular $5.9 billion U.S. exchange-traded fund tracking Chinese stocks, told its clients last week that delisting of Chinese companies was a “low probability.” Back during an earlier round of delisting fears in 2022, the company started shifting the bulk of its KraneShares CSI China Internet ETF (KWEB) holdings to the Hong Kong-traded shares of U.S.-listed Chinese companies. KraneShares reiterated taking that approach in the “unlikely event” that Chinese companies are delisted in the U.S.

Alibaba listed additional shares in Hong Kong in 2019, five years after a massive initial public offering in New York. While Baidu, JD.com and several other Chinese companies have also offered shares in Hong Kong in recent years, Temu parent PDD Holdings notably has yet to do so.

PDD did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment. The e-commerce company moved its headquarters from China to Ireland in 2023.

The backdrop here is U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America First Investment Policy” memo published in late February. It called for a review of U.S. investments in Chinese entities, as well as renewed scrutiny of publicly traded Chinese companies — both through commonly used listing structures and through the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act that became law in 2020.

The memo is a broad mandate for many government agencies, including the SEC, “to enforce existing rules and create new rules” relating to U.S.-listed Chinese companies, said Winston Ma, adjunct professor at NYU School of Law. 

Ma, author of “The Digital War: How China’s Tech Power Shapes the Future of AI, Blockchain and Cyberspace,” said that if regulators act now, they could use a fiscal reporting period ending April 2025 as year one, meaning that year two would end in 2026, fulfilling the “two year” compliance period necessary for delisting. “Delisting could come faster than you think,” he said.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which falls under the SEC’s oversight, said in 2022 that it was able to inspect audit records of potentially affected Chinese companies. For now, “there are no issuers at risk of having their securities subject to a trading prohibition” under the law, according to the SEC website.

The SEC did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment, while the PCAOB declined to comment.

The House Select Committee on China late last week sent letters to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan demanding the investment banks pull out from underwriting the Hong Kong IPO of Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology. JPMorgan declined to comment, while Bank of America did not respond.

Trump’s recent spat with Harvard also means more scrutiny on how U.S. universities’ endowment funds have made billions from their Chinese investments.

The House committee previously cited research from U.S. advocacy group Future Union on how U.S. pension funds and university endowments have invested in China.

“Atkins is under pressure to take an assertive stand against decades of duplicitous double standards,” Future Union Executive Director Andrew King said in an email. He is also managing partner at San Francisco-based venture capital firm Bastille.

“The delisting is overdue, and China overplayed its hand by stonewalling regulators and flaunting cases like Luckin Coffee fraud with inaction,” he said. “Now they are going to lose their path to secondary funding without oversight.”

China’s securities regulator has sought to increase its oversight of domestic companies listing overseas, especially following ride-hailing company Didi’s U.S. IPO in 2021 and its subsequent delisting. Under the Chinese securities regulator’s new process, few large Chinese companies have been able to list in the U.S. in recent months, including Chinese milk tea company Chagee just last week.

As the protracted delay over a legally binding TikTok divestiture has shown, the worries over delisting could be exaggerated — at least in the near term. Investors, however, may choose to vote with their feet first.

The White House is signaling a potential easing in China tensions. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told investors Tuesday he expected the U.S.-China trade war to de-escalate in the “very near future,” a person in the room told CNBC. The comments came a day after China vowed retaliation against countries that follow U.S. calls to isolate Beijing.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang visited China and met several prominent figures. Huang had an official meeting with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in Beijing Thursday— and reportedly DeepSeek’s Liang Wenfeng. The latest Pew Research survey of Americans found a softening in negative views on China.

Local governments in China mull bitcoin sales to shore up empty coffers. That consideration was reported by Reuters on Thursday. China has banned cryptocurrencies for years, and cash-strapped local authorities have been sitting on the seized assets. Unemployment among Chinese youths aged 16 to 24 fell in March to 16.5%, down from 16.9% in February, according to official data.

Chinese and Hong Kong stocks were trading in positive territory Wednesday as investors cheered the potential easing of U.S.-China trade tensions.

Mainland China’s CSI 300 rose 0.15% while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index — which includes several major Chinese companies — climbed 2.16% as of 11:00 a.m. local time.

Since the start of this year, the CSI 300 has lost 3.7% while the Hang Seng Index has risen 9.67%.

The benchmark 10-year Chinese government bond yield edged up slightly to 1.660%.

The offshore Chinese yuan strengthened marginally to 7.3049 against the greenback.

April 27 – 30: China’s parliament standing committee to meet and review a private sector support law

April 30: Official Purchasing Managers’ Index for April; Caixin Manufacturing PMI

May 1 – 5: China’s Labor Day holiday