Asian market finished mixed on Thursday as upbeat corporate earnings and an improvement in Chinese manufacturing was offset by an ongoing increase in money-market rates in the world's second-largest economy.
The HSBC manufacturing purchasing managers' index for China rose to a seven-month high of 50.9 in October, up from 50.2 previously and ahead of the 50.4 consensus forecast.
However, China's Shanghai Composite finished 0.9% lower after the People's Bank of China (PBoC) refrained from injecting extra liquidity into markets for the third auction in a row.
This caused the seven-day bond repurchase rate - an important measure of short-term liquidity - to jump 47 basis points to 4.05% during today's session, the biggest rise since late-July.
The PBoC has not sold reverse-repurchase contracts since October 17th, leading to a net withdrawal of funds from the financial system over the last week as previously issued bills matured.
Analysts at Capital Economics said that it seems more likely that growth in China has started to slow despite the improvement in the manufacturing PMI.
They explained: "Whatever the trajectory over the next couple of months, efforts to slow the unsustainably-fast flow of credit will weigh on growth over the coming year.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng benchmark fell 0.7%, as banking groups China Construction Bank and Industrial & Commercial Bank of China weighed on the market.
Over in Japan however, the Nikkei 225 finished 0.4% higher after upbeat results from engineering and electronics conglomerate Hitachi which reported a 5.7% rise in first-half profit, beating its own forecasts for a 11.4% fall.
Source: LiveCharts
The HSBC manufacturing purchasing managers' index for China rose to a seven-month high of 50.9 in October, up from 50.2 previously and ahead of the 50.4 consensus forecast.
However, China's Shanghai Composite finished 0.9% lower after the People's Bank of China (PBoC) refrained from injecting extra liquidity into markets for the third auction in a row.
This caused the seven-day bond repurchase rate - an important measure of short-term liquidity - to jump 47 basis points to 4.05% during today's session, the biggest rise since late-July.
The PBoC has not sold reverse-repurchase contracts since October 17th, leading to a net withdrawal of funds from the financial system over the last week as previously issued bills matured.
Analysts at Capital Economics said that it seems more likely that growth in China has started to slow despite the improvement in the manufacturing PMI.
They explained: "Whatever the trajectory over the next couple of months, efforts to slow the unsustainably-fast flow of credit will weigh on growth over the coming year.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng benchmark fell 0.7%, as banking groups China Construction Bank and Industrial & Commercial Bank of China weighed on the market.
Over in Japan however, the Nikkei 225 finished 0.4% higher after upbeat results from engineering and electronics conglomerate Hitachi which reported a 5.7% rise in first-half profit, beating its own forecasts for a 11.4% fall.
Source: LiveCharts
