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China, Hong Kong stocks fall as initial Sino-U.S. trade optimism wanes

Published: 12 Jun. 2025, 19:00

A screen showing the Shanghai composite index, Shenzhen component index and Hang Seng Index is seen in Jing'an district in Shanghai on April 9. [AFP/YONHAP]

Stocks in China and Hong Kong traded lower on Thursday, led by declines in the tech sector, as markets struggled to sustain the positive momentum from the Sino-U.S. trade talks that lacked concrete details.

China's blue-chip CSI 300 Index closed about 0.1 percent lower after wavering through the day, slipping from the three-week high touched on Wednesday.

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Hong Kong's Hang Seng index lost 1.4 percent at close to pull back from the nearly three-month high hit in the previous session.

Tech shares led losses in onshore and offshore markets. The CSI Semiconductor Index shed 1.5 percent, while the Hang Seng Tech Index dropped 2.2 percent.

Among major losers, chipmaker SMIC fell 2 percent to a one-week low. Alibaba weakened 3.2 percent and EV-maker Xpeng slid 6.7 percent.

The CSI Rare Earth Index closed flat after slipping nearly 1 percent in the morning session and continued to hover near its seven-month high.

A trade truce between the world's two biggest economies was back on track, U.S President Donald Trump said, a day after negotiators from Washington and Beijing agreed on a framework to ease bilateral retaliatory tariffs.

Under the agreement, Beijing will lift export curbs on rare earth minerals and the United States will restore Chinese students' access to its universities, Trump said on Truth Social.

Yet the terms remain subject to final approvals, with details notably absent. The 55 percent tariffs on Chinese imports will also stay, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said.

"We still don't know if what Trump says will actually happen. It's disappointing that the tariff rates were not dialled down at all and tech curbs on China were not even mentioned," said Jason Chan, senior investment strategist at Bank of East Asia, Hong Kong.

The talks left key issues, like chip exports, unaddressed, leaving room for conflicts in the future, and no one knows how long the current truce will last, he added.

Chinese markets have been struggling to recover from trade shocks for the past two months after Trump announced sweeping tariffs on April 2 that threatened the global trade system.

The CSI 300 Index has barely eked out any gains since then, while the Hang Seng Index has climbed 3.5 percent, but the two are underperforming the nearly 10 percent bounce in the MSCI World Index.

The market is less sensitive to trade talks and investors are shifting focus to economic fundamentals, Wang Zhuo, partner at Zhuozhu Investment, said.

"The key for China now is to bolster manufacturers' confidence and break the deflationary trend."

Reuters