Hong Kong stocks closed higher on Wednesday as positive news from some index heavyweights, including AIA and Xiaomi, offset concerns about weakness in China’s manufacturing sector amid a tariff conflict with the US.
The Hang Seng Index rose 0.5%, while the Hang Seng Tech Index gained 1.4%.
Insurance giant AIA gained 6.5% after it reported stellar new business growth in Hong Kong and mainland China.
Smartphone and electric-car maker Xiaomi rose 5.3% after announcing its first open-source artificial intelligence reasoning model.
Alibaba rose 2.2% on news that its food delivery platform, Ele.me, plans to offer over 10 billion yuan (US$13.8 billion) in “red envelopes” to subsidise customers.
In terms of other star stocks, Kingsoft Cloud rose 14%, SMIC rose 3%, NetEase rose 2%, Li Auto rose 1%; while NIO fell 5%, Meituan and XPeng fell 1%.