China shares bounce as stimulus measures boost confidence

Mainland Chinese shares bounced strongly on Wednesday afternoon as markets took hope in stimulus measures announced by Beijing on Tuesday.

The Shanghai composite surged 1.57 percent to close at 3,102.10 and the Shenzhen component rose 1.09 percent to end the day at 9,700.49. The Shenzhen composite jumped 1.49 percent to close at 1,660.41.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index also traded in positive territory, adding 0.17 percent.

Stimulus measures announced by Beijing on Tuesday included infrastructure spending and cuts in taxes and fees worth nearly 2 trillion yuan ($289.28 billion).

The rest of Asia was more subdued. Japan’s Nikkei 225 declined 0.6 percent to close at 21,596.81, and the Topix slipped 0.25 percent to end at 1,615.25. Shares of Fast Retailing, the company behind the Uniqlo chain of apparel stores, fell more than 2 percent.

In South Korea, the Kospi slipped 0.17 percent to close at 2,175.60 with industry heavyweight Samsung Electronics recovering slightly to slip 0.56 percent, from steeper declines earlier.

Australia’s ASX 200 rose 0.64 percent, but the Australian dollar dropped to a two-month low of $0.7031, last changing hands at $0.7034. Data on Wednesday showed the country’s economy slowed sharply in the second half of last year.

“Overall, it was a pretty weak print,” Diana Mousina, senior economist at AMP Capital, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday following the release of Australian GDP data.

“It’s really in line with the slowing global growth that we’ve had over the second half of the year and I guess that the difficulty for us is reconciling the very strong employment numbers that Australia has had with the weakness in GDP numbers,” Mousina said.