By Duncan Hewitt -
Asian shares opened higher Thursday following the previous day’s rise on the Dow Jones index in New York.
In China, where share prices have fallen for five straight days, markets opened sharply up, before reversing some of their gains. The main Shanghai Composite Index finished the morning up more than 1.5 percent -- at 2,972 -- after briefly rising above the psychologically important 3,000 mark. China’s secondary market in Shenzhen was up just over 1 percent, while the high-tech ChiNext index was also up by almost 1 percent. Chinese media reported that the country’s central bank had injected another 150 billion yuan (around $23 billion) of funds into the market via short-term repurchase agreements.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index also rose, climbing 2.4 percent by mid-morning local time to more than compensate for the previous day’s 1.5 percent fall, while Singapore’s Straits Times Index was up almost 2 percent.
Japan’s Nikkei finished the morning almost 1.9 percent higher at 18,724. The governor of the Bank of Japan downplayed fears about China’s economy, saying its growth was still “quite robust,” Reuters reported.
Australia’s ASX 200 initially dropped on falling investment figures, but rebounded on reports that companies were planning higher than expected investments in the coming months. By lunchtime local time it was up more than 1.4 percent.
China’s official media again sought to calm global sentiment with a commentary in the official Global Times saying that the market fall was a “fever” rather than a “cancer,” and the country’s financial institutions had made “contingency plans.”
However various analysts said Thursday morning that despite Tuesday’s cut in interest rates and the bank reserve requirement ratio, the Chinese government would still need to take further steps to increase the amount of funds available to the real economy in the coming months.