SHANGHAI: China stocks were up on Thursday, led by insurance companies as better-than-expected earnings boosted sentiment, while investors continued to weigh geopolitical tensions and economic data to gauge the pace of China’s recovery.
China’s blue-chip CSI300 Index and the Shanghai Composite Index both closed up 0.7%.
Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng Index was up 0.4%, while the China Enterprises Index added 0.3%.
Insurance shares soared 5.9%, with Ping An Insurance Group Co of China Ltd adding 10% by the daily limit, as the firm’s better-than-expected first quarter earnings boosted investor sentiment.
That led to a 1.4% rise in the CSI Financials Index.
Meanwhile, China’s industrial firms’ profits shrank at a slightly slower pace in January-March but the decline remained in double digits as the economy struggled to fully recover from the exit to the zero-COVID policy.
Citi analysts said industrial profits print showed that despite a rebound in economic growth, demand for manufactured goods remained poor.
Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Wednesday for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, fulfilling a longstanding goal of Kyiv which had publicly sought such talks for months.
“Chinese local investors are positive on President Xi Jinping’s phone call with Ukraine leader and plans to send a delegation to the war-torn country,” UBS wrote in a note.
However, tensions with the United States continued as US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said that Chinese cloud computing companies like Huawei Cloud and Alibaba Cloud could pose a threat to US security and vowed to review a request to add them to an export control list.
Shares of artificial intelligence (AI) and media companies dropped, after frenzy around Chinese equivalents of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot fuelled speculative bets and boosted shares in recent months.
Media firms tumbled 4.5%, artificial intelligence slid 1.2%.
Tech stocks traded in Hong Kong slipped 0.3%, with Alibaba and Tencent down 1.8% and 0.9%, respectively.
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