Stock prices for three major Chinese telecommunications companies set to be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange slumped Monday in their first day of trading after the decision was announced.

China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom each fell substantially in overnight trading on the Hong Kong stock exchange in the wake of the NYSE's decision Thursday to delist their American depositary receipts beginning next week.

The move was made following an executive order from the Trump administration preventing U.S. residents from investing in companies tied to China's military.

China Mobile and China Telecom lost a combined $1.5 billion of market value in Monday's Hong Kong trading. China Telecom dropped 2.8%, its lowest level since March, while China Mobile fell by 0.8% end at its lowest share price since June 2006.

China Unicom, meanwhile, rebounded late in the session for a small gain after its share price had dropped by as much as 3.8%.

President Donald Trump's executive order, signed in November, said China "is increasingly exploiting United States capital to resource and to enable the development and modernization of its military, intelligence, and other security apparatuses."

The NYSE's decision to delist China's "Big Three" telecom firms "is just another example of Washington abusing state power to depress law-abiding Chinese companies under the pretext of so-called 'national security,'" the state-owned news agency Xinhua wrote in an editorial Monday.

"So far, the U.S. administration has failed to present any evidence to its claim that the three firms are 'Communist Chinese military companies,'" the editorial said, adding that move only harms the United States' own interests by "chipping away at the U.S. credibility as a leading financial market."

China's commerce ministry vowed Saturday to "take necessary measures" to "safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises."

Financial analysts, however, said it is unlikely Beijing will make any serious retaliatory moves immediately.

China instead will "want to give [President-elect Joe Biden] an opportunity to really start the relationship anew," KraneShares chief investment officer Brendan Ahern told CNBC on Monday.

Partners Financial Holdings non-executive chairman Ronald Wan agreed that any retaliation by Beijing probably won't be overly disruptive.

"We will need to see if the Chinese government will take retaliation against the U.S., but I think the actual things to be done will not be significant, maybe restricting some sort of U.S. government-related entities, activities in China or in Hong Kong," he said.

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