Photo taken on May 26, 2020 shows the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York, the United States.  (Courtney Crow/NYSE/Handout via Xinhua)

China's securities regulator on Sunday vowed support for the country's three major telecom operators to safeguard their interests according to law after the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) announced it has started the process of delisting the Chinese telcos in move orchestrated by the Trump administration to crack down on Chinese businesses.

American depositary receipts (ADRs) issued by China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom have been traded on the NYSE for some 20 years, and the three firms have long complied with US stock market rules and regulatory requirements and have been well accepted by global investors, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) said in a late-night statement on its website. 

The NYSE announced Thursday (US time) it will delist shares of the three Chinese telecom operators to comply with US President Donald Trump's executive order, which bans anyone in the US from publicly trading securities of firms the Trump administration deems to have links to Chinese military starting January 11. 

The US' politically motivated move to implement the executive order turns a blind eye to the actual the legitimate rights of the firms and their investors and severely damages market rules and order, read the CSRC statement.  

Condemning the delisting move as abusing national security and state power to crack down on Chinese businesses, the Ministry of Commerce also pledged in a statement on Saturday to take necessary measures to resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises.

Neither of the three telcos had commented on the delisting as of press time.

The three firms, which each has a huge user base, have big clout in the global telecom services sector, the CSRC said, revealing that their ADRs with total market capitalization of less than 20 billion yuan ($3.06 billion) account for a tiny portion of their share capital - the firm with the highest ADR ratio among the three reports only 2.2 percent. 

China Telecom's ADRs are only valued at about 800 million yuan while China Unicom has ADRs worth about 1.2 billion yuan, the securities regulator said, noting that insufficient liquidity, low-volume trading and inadequate fundraising mean the delisting will have limited direct impact on the firms' development and market operations. 

The three telecom giants are believed to be capable of handling the adverse impact resulting from the executive order and delisting measures. 

The US' position as the international financial hub is rested upon global firms and investors' faith in the tolerance and definiteness of its rules and system, the CSRC said in the statement, stressing some political forces in the US have recently continued to groundlessly clamp down on US-listed foreign firms regardless of the global status of the US capital market, an indication of its random, unruly and uncertain rules. 

Arguing against the unwise moves, the securities regulator urged the US to respect the market and the rule of law and to make more effort to safeguard global financial market order, protect investors' legit rights and ensure global economic stability.