Welcome to Axis ProRodder, where we take just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the

inclusion of tech, business, and politics. Sponsored by Bridge Bank. Be safe, venture wisely. I'm

Dampra Mac. On today's show, Silicon Valley rolls out contact tracing and the end of Memorial Day

weekend traffic. But first, an economic cold war.

So this week, both Congress and the NASDAQ made it harder for Chinese companies to list their

stocks in the U.S. due to growing concerns over accounting practices and shareholder rights.

Now, the big picture here is that this is part of broader economic tensions between the two

countries over trade and homeland security and more recently the coronavirus.

But it's also quite specific to what information Chinese companies do and often don't share with U.S. regulators.

For example, take the case of Luckin coffee.

It's kind of become the poster child for this.

Luckin is kind of China's homegrown version of Starbucks and went public on the NASDAQ last year

at a whopping $3 billion valuation. It later traded up to $13 billion. But then early this year,

a hedge fund publicly accused Luckin of cooking the books and the company eventually copped to it,

firing both its CEO and COO. But what it didn't do was provide NASDAQ with the information NASDAQ wanted.

So this week, NASDAQ sent a so-called delisting notice, which means its stock would no longer be able to

trade here. But that wasn't it. Nasdaq also amended its overall rules, requiring greater transparency

into accounting practices before letting any company list, regardless of location, and also

putting new limits on insider control. Then yesterday, the U.S. Senate got into the act, passing a bipartisan

bill that would require Chinese companies, Chinese companies specifically, to establish that they are not

owned or controlled by their government. Here's Louisiana Senator John Kennedy, speaking ahead of the

vote, which

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