Photo by Steven Allen Adams West Virginia Treasurer Larry Pack and 20 other state treasurers and financial officials want the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to consider delisting Chinese stocks.

CHARLESTON – State Treasurer Larry Pack is joining a growing chorus calling on Chinese companies to be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.

In a May 20 letter to Paul Atkins, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 21 state financial officials including Pack have asked for the commission to investigate delisting China-based issuers of stocks on U.S. exchanges.

“Efforts led by the Chinese Communist Party to circumvent U.S. regulatory structures have put American dollars at risk,” Pack said in a statement Wednesday. “We should be doing everything in our power to hold bad foreign actors accountable. Especially those connected to Communist China who attempt to steal U.S. trade secrets to be weaponized against the United States.”

Pack and the other state treasurers accused Chinese companies of not complying with federal audit requirements, audit deficiencies, crackdowns on companies that do due-diligence research on Chinese companies and alleged stock manipulation and cited national security concerns.

“The Chinese government’s actions create an environment of opaqueness that is antithetical to the reporting requirements and fraud prohibitions of the Securities Exchange Act…and to the intent of the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act of 2020 (HFCAA),” the letter stated.

“As state financial officers, part of our responsibility is to ensure that the American people’s finances – and our American financial system – are protected from foreign actors who mean to do us harm,” the letter continued. “That is why we believe the SEC should investigate the extent to which it is prevented from properly confirming Chinese companies’ compliance with the provisions of the Securities Exchange Act…”

According to Barron’s, President Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hinted at possible delisting of Chinese stocks in April. In 2020, Trump signed the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act, allowing the executive branch to delist companies. In 2021, the New York Stock Exchange delisted three companies, China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom.

Pack, who won the election for treasurer in November, has focused on China early in his first months in office.

In February, Pack proposed a plan to the Board of Treasurer Investments to review all state short-term investments, identify any investments in Chinese-owned or -controlled companies and divest state tax dollars from those companies. That plan was approved in March.

Pack will present a similar plan to the state Investment Management Board when he becomes the chairman in July of the Board of Trustees.

Last month, Pack announced a ban of DeepSeek, a Chinese-created artificial intelligence program, on all mobile devices used by employees of the in the office of the state treasurer.

Bans are already in place on TikTok and WeChat.