Delisting Dramas: How real is Washington’s newest threat to Chinese stocks?
Legal options, timeline for action, and fallback listing prospects.
The Letter
On 2 May 2025 a joint letter from the House Select Committee and ten senators on the CCP landed on SEC Chair Paul Atkins’ desk. The lawmakers asked the Commission to “suspend trading and begin delisting” twenty Chinese companies—from Alibaba and JD .com to lidar maker Hesai—arguing that they advance Beijing’s strategic goals, host Communist Party branches, rely on variable‑interest‑entity (VIE) structures that deny U.S. investors real ownership, or abet forced labour in Xinjiang.
The tone is unmistakably political, yet the request can’t be dismissed: in December 2020 Congress passed the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act, and within a month the SEC—backed by a presidential order—had already expelled China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom from the NYSE (CNOOC followed soon after). Washington has shown it is both willing and able to pull the trigger.
In this article I examine how real today’s delisting risk is, what legal levers exist, how quickly action could follow, and whether and when the targeted companies can secure alternative listings. The full analysis is reserved for paying subscribers.