Hong Kong stocks retreat as China counts economic pain amid stimulus calls while Alibaba slips before earnings

Name: Lights out but operating: eateries, supermarkets ‘open’ in Beijing malls amid Covid restrictions
Uploaded: 2022-05-26T02:59:55.000Z
Duration: 3 min 14 s
Description: Lights out but operating: eateries, supermarkets ‘open’ in Beijing malls amid Covid restrictions

Premier Li Keqiang said the Chinese economy in some aspects is in worse shape than when the pandemic first hit the nation in 2020

Alibaba weakened before reporting its latest quarterly results as the tech sector failed to sustain a rebound from Wednesday

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An electronic board shows the latest stock transactions outside Exchange Square in Central, Hong Kong on May 19. Photo: EPA-EFE

Cheryl Heng

Published: 10:59am, 26 May 2022Updated: 5:00pm, 26 May 2022

Hong Kong stocks fell, led by Meituan and JD.com, as top Chinese officials detailed steep economic losses from Covid-19 lockdowns while calling for greater efforts to shore up growth. Alibaba Group Holding and Baidu slid before their earnings reports.

The Hang Seng Index dropped 0.3 per cent to 20,116.20 at the close of Thursday trading. The Tech Index lost 0.2 per cent while the Shanghai Composite Index added 0.5 per cent. Benchmarks in South Korea, Japan and Australia fell by 0.2 to 0.7 per cent.

Alibaba, the owner of this newspaper, dropped 1.5 per cent to HK$81.10. Meituan fell 0.7 per cent to HK$158.60 while JD.com weakened 0.6 per cent to HK$197.40. China Mengniu Dairy and Anta Sports retreated at least 0.8 per cent, as lockdowns and worries about job losses blunt consumer spending.

Stocks struggled to sustain a rebound from Wednesday. A series of lockdowns since March that shuttered factories and upended supply chains has prompted Premier Li Keqiang to unveil 33 growth measures this week, and demand for swift actions to restore growth and protect employment.

“The government is clearly panicking and has been stepping up policy easing [measures] with increasing urgency,” Xiaocen Wang, an analyst at Alpine Macro wrote in a report on May 26. “Their efficacy and impact are constrained by the rolling lockdowns that have paralysed activity.”

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Lights out but operating: eateries, supermarkets ‘open’ in Beijing malls amid Covid restrictions

Economic indicators have deteriorated significantly, Beijing officials said on Wednesday, and “the current situations in some areas to a certain extent are worse than when the pandemic hit the nation in 2020,” Li said in a speech during a multi-agency teleconference on Wednesday.