Hong Kong stocks closed higher. The Hang Seng Index (HSI) rose 0.7%, the Hang Seng Tech Index (HSTECH) rose 1.2%.

Xiaomi rose 4.2%; Kuaishou rose 3.5%; Bilibili up 3%; XPeng up 2%; Pop Mart rose 0.9%; Alibaba up 0.8%; Tencent down 0.1%.

China’s retail sales grew 6.4% last month, the fastest pace since December 2023, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday. The rise exceeded all the estimates of the economists polled by Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, industrial output in May grew by 5.8% year on year, and fixed-asset investment in the first five months rose by 3.7%, the statistics bureau said. Both fell short of the projections of the Bloomberg survey.

A separate report showed that the downturn in the property market deepened last month. New home prices fell 0.22% in May from the previous month, the worst drop since October, according to the agency.

“The economic outlook for the rest of the year is uncertain,” said Zhang Zhiwei, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management in Hong Kong. “Property prices continue to weaken and may constrain consumer sentiment going forward. The front-loading of export activities helped to sustain the manufacturing sector so far this year. It is unclear how long exports can continue [the sector’s] momentum going into the second half of the year.”