THE whimper that ended Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd's meeting in Beijing dragged the Hang Seng Index down 51.78 points to 7,070.61 as foreign investors continued to give the market a wide berth.
In the fifth successive day of losses, action was again sluggish, with early estimates putting turnover at $3.29 billion, up from a corrected figure of $2.95 billion on Thursday.