China misses out on Asian shares’ rebound

China’s benchmark Shanghai composite index was down 0.3% and the blue-chip CSI300 index eased 0.2%. Both indices wavered between gains and losses in the morning session.

“What the market wants is some degree of certainty,” said Jim McCafferty, head of equity research, Asia ex-Japan, at Nomura.

“I think everyone knows that the trade deal might not be as optimistic as it might have been in … June or July, and it might be negative for many Chinese companies. But the fact that there’s no certainty there is one reason that investors are staying on the sidelines.”

News of a possible new round of talks between Washington and Beijing comes even as the trade war between the world’s two largest economies looks set to escalate.

Chinese officials welcomed an invitation from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for new talks. But US President Donald Trump tempered market expectations, tweeting on Thursday that the US is “under no pressure to make a deal with China”.

The Trump administration is readying a final list of $200bn in Chinese imports on which it plans to levy tariffs in the coming days, a move that many fear would mark a severe escalation in the trade war and put a significant dent in global growth.

“The news on Wednesday that US officials had invited China to restart trade talks suggests that the announcement of tariffs on $200bn of Chinese imports may be delayed. But we think the chance that fresh talks will defuse trade tensions is low,” Capital Economics analysts said in a note.

The analysts noted that Mnuchin had brokered a deal with China in May that was scuppered days later by Trump.

“As a result, he has little credibility with Chinese policymakers,” they said.

On Friday, the state-run English-language China Daily newspaper said in an editorial that China would not “surrender” to US demands, and that Beijing “will not hesitate to take countermeasures against US tariffs to safeguard China’s interests”.

Uncertainty over the global outlook for trade was highlighted by the European Central Bank, which on Thursday kept policy unchanged as expected and warned that risks from protectionism were gaining prominence.

‘Eye-watering’

But a sharp interest rate hike by Turkey’s central bank to support a tumbling lira boosted risk appetite in emerging markets. In a rare show of independence, the bank raised its benchmark interest rate by 625 basis points, to 24%.

Currency crises in Turkey and Argentina have stoked fears of contagion over the past several weeks, hammering emerging market assets from Indonesia to India to South Africa.

After rising as high as 6.01 to the dollar, the lira weakened slightly to 6.1275 on Friday.

“The Turkish Central Bank seems to have regained some credibility after hiking rates to an eye-watering 24%. This move looks to have reset investor expectations for the lira and let some investors breathe a sigh of relief,” said Hannah Anderson, global market strategist at JP Morgan Asset Management.

“However, this is not enough to assuage all investor worries about EM. Individual emerging markets are being buffeted by highly local cross currents in the context of broader negative sentiment around EMs.”