Asian stock markets slipped in to the red on Tuesday. China's Shanghai Composite and Shenzhen Composite are down 0.25% and 0.08%, respectively. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was also down 0.08%, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index and Korea's KOSPI lost 0.9% and 0.55%. The only index that showed the growth was Japanese Nikkei 225, which increased by 1.24%.
Traders reacted to China's latest economic data, which turned out to be disappointing. Economic growth in the last quarter of last year was 2.9% and in the whole year it was 3%. This indicator was lower than the results for the third quarter (3.9%) and annual forecast, which amounted to 5.5%.
Moreover, China had 1.41 billion people at the end of last year, 850,000 fewer than the end of 2021. The first time this has happened in more than 60 years.
In addition, the country recorded a decline in retail sales by 1.8% in December 2022, and by 0.2% over the past year. At the same time there was a 1.3% increase in industrial production for December and a 3.6% increase for all of 2022.
Thanks to the easing of quarantine restrictions in China since the beginning of this year, analysts expect to see a recovery of the country's economy. The biggest growth is expected in the services sector, which was the most affected by the restrictions.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index was in the red as Wuxi Biologics securities fell by 6.4%, Baidu lost 2.9%, and Techtronic Industries dropped 1.2%.
Among the components of the Shanghai Composite, shares of China Life Insurance fell by 3.6%, Zijin Mining Group lost 2.2%, Ping An Insurance decreased by 1.5%, and China Petroleum & Chemical (Sinopec) shed 1.1%
The Japanese stock market was trading higher as the Bank of Japan kicked off its two-day monetary policy meeting. Traders are anxious to find out if the central bank makes a decision about a change to its current monetary policy.
The growth of the Japanese indicator was influenced by the increase in prices of Lasertec shares (+3.6%), Keyence and Advantest (+2.6% in each case), Tokyo Electron (+2.3%) and SoftBank Group (+1.7%).