USCC Hearing on Corporate Accountability, Access to Credit, and Access to Markets in China’s Financial System

The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) is holding a hearing this Thursday in Washington, DC on the above subject. Among those testifying will be Prof. Paul Gillis, the author of the excellent China Accounting Blog. His testimony is a good summary and review of the current problems faced by the SEC and the PCAOB in their efforts to get information about audit procedures from Big Four-affiliated Chinese accounting firms. (I say "affiliated" because the Chinese firms are separately owned and I don't know what kind of contractual arrangements actually bind them to the foreign firms whose name they share.)

Because I have provided expert testimony on this issue, it's probably important to add that I don't necessarily agree with everything Prof. Gillis says in his testimony. In particular, I have expressed here my own views on the issues of how far China's laws on state secrets and archives actually constrain the auditing firms.