SHANGHAI: Hong Kong shares rose on Thursday, led by property, tech and chip stocks, while investors awaited more cues on Sino-US trade tensions. China equities were broadly steady.
Hong Kong stocks drop on trade war anxiety, China inches higher
Hong Kong benchmark Hang Seng rose 1.6%. China’s blue-chip CSI 300 Index was flat by the lunch break, while the Shanghai Composite Index inched up 0.2%.
Property shares traded onshore and offshore surged nearly 3% each, after China’s premier urged unlocking real estate market potential and new home prices stabilised in March.
Tech majors traded in Hong Kong rose 2.3%, reversing some losses from the previous day after the United States restricted Nvidia chip sales to China.
China will pay no attention if the US continues to play the “tariff numbers game”, China’s foreign ministry said on Thursday, after the White House outlined how China faces tariffs of up to 245% due to its retaliatory actions.
“US and China are stuck in an unprecedented, and expensive, game of chicken, and it seems both sides are unwilling to back down,” said Ting Lu, chief China economist at Nomura.
“We expect tensions between these two mega economies to worsen significantly, especially as China has been making large strides in high-tech sectors, including AI and robotics,” Lu said.
China’s semiconductor shares were up 1%, as investors braced for the results from Taiwan’s TSMC due later in the day to show further evidence of the wide-ranging uncertainty in the chip industry spurred by US President Donald Trump’s trade policies.
Chip giant SMIC rose 3.4%.
Investors are also awaiting a press conference scheduled for Monday, where regulators are expected to outline their plan for “expanding opening-up of the service-sector”.
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