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Chinese company listings on US stock exchanges have ground to a halt after a two-year boom as regulators in both countries step up scrutiny because of concerns over stock manipulation.
Just two Chinese companies have listed in New York since the start of January, compared with 19 in the same period last year, according to an FT analysis of public records. A record 126 Chinese initial public offerings occurred across 2024 and 2025.
The freeze follows months of tighter scrutiny by China’s securities regulator of offshore listings by domestic companies, with no new approvals granted since December. Nasdaq has also tightened listing standards, including by raising minimum fundraising thresholds and broadened its discretion to delay or deny IPOs it believes could be vulnerable to manipulation.
Political pressure in Washington has also intensified, with lawmakers urging the SEC to restrict Chinese companies’ access to US capital markets, citing investor protection and national security concerns.
The slump in Chinese IPOs in New York is the latest sign of financial decoupling between the world’s two biggest economies, a sharp reversal from an era when many of China’s best-known companies chose US exchanges to go public.
“This is part of a longer trend of less engagement between the Chinese financial system and the US financial system,” said Andrew Collier, a senior fellow with the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School.
That momentum cooled markedly in the second half of last year when the China Securities Regulatory Commission intensified its review of overseas listing applications by domestic companies, asking detailed questions ranging from whether employee stock option plans could constitute insider trading to why some groups had failed to make full social insurance contributions.
A Shanghai-based lawyer who has dealt with the stock regulator said: “Many companies are now either rejected during the CSRC’s review process or left waiting for long periods without a response, prompting some to withdraw their applications.”
He added the review timeline had stretched from about two months to an “unknown” period.
Meanwhile, Nasdaq last September unveiled measures that made it harder for Chinese companies to list, including a rule requiring at least $25mn in IPO proceeds — well above the sums raised by most Chinese issuers on the exchange in recent years.
“It is a clear message that small Chinese companies are not welcome on Nasdaq,” said Daniel McClory, head of China at California-based Boustead Securities, which has worked on Chinese IPOs on the exchange.
Regulators in both countries were responding in part to concerns over manipulation in small-cap Chinese stocks listed in New York, which has inflicted losses on US retail investors.
“Pump-and-dump schemes among Chinese stocks are quite serious,” said Jamie Selway, director of the SEC’s trading and markets division, adding the agency had heard from large retail brokers since last summer that the issue was leading to substantial investor losses.
Worries over stock manipulation are one factor behind CSRC’s tighter scrutiny of US listings as the issue has become a fresh source of criticism from Washington.
“Many small Chinese companies were unable to list domestically and instead turned to lower-threshold venues such as Nasdaq, which was not initially a top priority for Beijing,” said an executive at a leading Chinese investment bank that works on companies’ US IPOs. “But when US politicians began accusing Chinese companies of coming to US markets to defraud American investors, the CSRC had to tighten scrutiny at the source to avoid giving critics further ammunition.”
The CSRC said manipulation of Chinese stocks in New York falls under the remit of US regulators and should be “dealt with strictly in accordance with the law”, adding that it was assisting the SEC in investigations into alleged pump-and-dump schemes.
The tougher regulatory environment has prompted many Chinese companies to shelve plans to go public in the US even though New York remained their most practical IPO destination because many were unable to list in Shanghai and would have fetched lower valuations in Hong Kong.
Chinese groups seeking US listings must obtain clearance from the local stock regulator in addition to approval from the US SEC. The CSRC has not received any new filing applications for US IPOs since October.
“We have no choice but to hold off and wait and see even though this could cause us to miss our listing window,” said an executive at a Shanghai-based company that had initially planned to float shares on Nasdaq in the first half of this year.
Despite the clampdown, US regulators have signalled the door remains open to Chinese issuers that meet listing standards.
Selway of the SEC said: “You wouldn’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater by saying that all Chinese companies are always bad investment choices. That would be profoundly wrong. Chinese companies are still welcome to the US equity market, just not the toxic small-cap manipulative ones.”
