SHANGHAI: Hong Kong shares closed higher on Thursday, led by property and tech stocks, while investors awaited more cues from ongoing trade tensions between the US and China.
Chinese equities were broadly steady.
Hong Kong benchmark Hang Seng ended higher by 1.6%. China’s blue-chip CSI 300 Index closed roughly flat, while the Shanghai Composite Index inched up 0.1%.
Property shares traded onshore and offshore surged as much as 4% 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 1.9%, 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 the Asian country 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 0.5%, as Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, logged a forecast-beating 60% leap in quarterly profit. Chip giant SMIC rose 1.3%.
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