China's biggest telcos to be kicked off Wall Street

Traders on the Wall Street trading floor in New York last December.

Just days before Joe Biden's inauguration as US President (January 20), the three largest Chinese telecommunications companies - China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom (Hong Kong) Limited - will be delisted. on the New York Stock Exchange and will therefore no longer have access to the financial market of the United States, the largest in the world.

A decision, despite everything, more symbolic than effective, since the bulk of its shares are listed in Hong Kong.

The decision responds to an executive order signed by Donald Trump last November in which it prohibited US citizens from investing in Chinese companies that had any ties to the Beijing Army.

Among the companies indicated by the White House were the three

, along with others such as Huawei, TikTok or Tencent, for representing, in Washington's opinion, a threat to national security.

It is, therefore, a political decision that comes a decade after the US stock exchanges courted the great Chinese giants to list them on their market and attract investment.

Next week, the shares of these three companies will no longer be listed on Wall Street, according to the note published by the New York Stock Exchange, and their final suspension of the indices will occur between the 7th and 11th.

The protests in China have not been long in coming.

The Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, assured, in an interview with local media collected by Reuters, that the measure harms the two countries and poses a serious risk to the global economy.

More aggressive, the Ministry of Commerce issued a note in which it denounced the abuse of the initiative and its inconsistency with respect to market rules and warned that it will take "retaliation" to protect the rights of the companies.

The measure, however, has not caught the Chinese authorities unexpectedly, which long before the executive order signed by Trump in November had already been alerted to the Administration's intention to reduce financial ties between the two countries. Indeed, analysts at Hong Kong-based investment firm Gavekal Research last summer linked Beijing's decision to impose the National Security Law on the former British colony with the need to assume full control of the enclave's financial market. .