Chinese companies could be forced to delist from United States bourses by January 2022 if they do not comply with a series of new rules recommended by a group of influential US regulators in a report released on Thursday. The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets has recommended the Securities and Exchange Commission order US exchanges to adopt new rules for foreign issuers, including a requirement they provide access to their audit working papers to sell new shares or keep their existing listing in the US, it said. China was the only country mentioned by name among non-cooperating jurisdictions in the report. The working group includes the heads of the US Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The recommendations follow a series of accounting scandals involving Chinese companies, including a US$300 million accounting fraud that led to Luckin Coffee being struck off from the Nasdaq in June. They could push more Chinese firms to consider listings in safe harbours closer to home in Hong Kong or Shanghai, more so with the latest banning of Chinese-owned apps. “The recommendations outlined in the report will increase investor protection and level the playing field for all companies listed on US exchanges,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who is chairman of the working group, said in a statement . “The United States is the premier jurisdiction in the world for raising capital, and we will not compromise on the core principles that underpin investor confidence in our capital markets.” To avoid market disruption, the group recommended currently listed firms be given until January 2022 to comply with the rules or face expulsion. The working group also recommended enhancing disclosures by issuers and funds regarding investing in companies from so-called non-compliant jurisdictions, encouraging greater due diligence by funds that track indexes that contain companies from those countries and issuing new guidance to investment advisers with respect to their fiduciary obligations when investing in those countries. Bloomberg, citing an unidentified Treasury official who spoke to reporters in Washington, reported the working group had not yet determined how to enforce the new guidelines. The US Senate passed a similar proposal in May that would require Chinese firms to share their audit working papers with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), which reviews audits of publicly traded companies and registered broker-dealers in the US. Chinese laws have not allowed the PCAOB to review the audits of prominent mainland firms listed in the US, including tech giants Alibaba Group Holding and Baidu. Alibaba is the parent company of the South China Morning Post . The working group’s recommendations come as relations increasingly deteriorate between Washington and Beijing on a variety of issues, including trade, national security and Hong Kong’s autonomy. Last month, the Trump administration ordered China to close its consulate in Houston, accusing the consulate of being an “epicentre” of economic espionage and theft . On Thursday, US President Donald Trump issued executives orders to ban unspecified transactions with Chinese-owned apps TikTok and WeChat, which is owned by tech giant Tencent Holdings. Tencent slumped, taking the Hang Seng Index down with it, as Trump signalled actions to erode the Asian financial hub. Against this backdrop, several Chinese companies have considered secondary listings closer to home in Hong Kong or pursuing so-called take-private deals. New economy companies JD.com and NetEase raised more than US$6 billion combined with secondary listings in Hong Kong in June, following a US$12.9 billion secondary listing last year by Alibaba. 58.com, a Chinese online classified advertisement site, agreed in June to be taken private by a consortium of investors led by Warburg Pincus and General Atlantic. The deal valued the company at US$8.7 billion. In July, Sina Corporation, the operator of social media platform Weibo, said a company controlled by its chairman offered to take it private and Tencent made its own preliminary, non-binding offer to take search engine Sogou private.