People are reflected in a glass while looking at electronic boards displaying stock information at the Australian Securities Exchange.
Brendon Thorne | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Hong Kong stocks led declines in the Asia-Pacific region on Thursday as Xpeng led electric vehicle stocks lower, while investors digested high-level discussions between the United States and China.
The Hang Seng index fell 1.63% by early afternoon trading, giving up more than half the previous session’s gains of 3.92%.
Hong Kong-listed shares of Xpeng dropped 4.2% after the Chinese EV company reported a wider quarterly loss.
U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met Wednesday outside of San Francisco in their first face-to-face meeting in a year. The talks were on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference and were a part of efforts between the U.S. and China to boost high-level communication amid continued tensions.
Separately, the South Korea stock markets opened an hour later than usual, at 10 a.m. local time. The delayed open was intended to ease rush-hour traffic as college entrance exams were administrated across the country.
South Korea’s Kospi was 0.26% down, while the Kosdaq higher by 0.31%.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 dipped 0.73% and the Topix lower by 0.44%.
Mainland China’s CSI 300 dropped 0.96%.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.72%.
Overnight, U.S. stocks climbed, building on the strong rally from Tuesday, on the back of more encouraging inflation data.
The S&P 500 advanced 0.16%, while the Nasdaq Composite inched higher by 0.07%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 163.51 points, or 0.47%.
The Dow rose for the fourth straight session.
— CNBC’s Lisa Kailai Han contributed to this report
